Saturday, October 23, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
'Your Brain on Computers'
“...people are walking around fatigued and not realizing their cognitive potential...What can we do to get us back to our full potential?”
Art Kramer, straight lampin. Photo courtesy of Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
“Attention is the holy grail,” [David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah] says. “Everything that you’re conscious of, everything you let in, everything you remember and you forget, depends on it.”
----
...technology has redefined the notion of what is “urgent.” How soon do people need to get information and respond to it?...the drumbeat of incoming data has created a false sense of urgency that can affect people’s ability to focus.
...a seminal study from the University of Michigan that showed people can better learn after walking in the woods than after walking a busy street. The study indicates that learning centers in the brain become taxed when asked to process information, even during the relatively passive experience of taking in an urban setting. By extension, some scientists believe heavy multitasking fatigues the brain, draining it of the ability to focus.
Mr. Strayer, the trip leader, argues that nature can refresh the brain. “Our senses change. They kind of recalibrate — you notice sounds, like these crickets chirping; you hear the river, the sounds, the smells, you become more connected to the physical environment, the earth, rather than the artificial environment.”
Mr. Braver accepts the Michigan research but wants to understand precisely what happens inside the brain. And he wonders: Why don’t brains adapt to the heavy stimulation, turning us into ever-stronger multitaskers?
“Right,” says Mr. Kramer, the skeptic. “Why wouldn’t the circuits be exercised, in a sense, and we’d get stronger?”
This has become such a sizzling field of research that two years ago the National Institutes of Health established a division to support studies of the parts of the brain involved with focus.
Behavioral studies have shown that performance suffers when people multitask. These researchers are wondering whether attention and focus can take a hit when people merely anticipate the arrival of more digital stimulation.
“The expectation of e-mail seems to be taking up our working memory,” Mr. Yantis says.
Working memory is a precious resource in the brain. The scientists hypothesize that a fraction of brain power is tied up in anticipating e-mail and other new information — and that they might be able to prove it using imaging.
“To the extent you have less working memory, you have less space for storing and integrating ideas and therefore less to do the reasoning you need to do,” says Mr. Kramer, floating nearby.
“There’s a real mental freedom in knowing no one or nothing can interrupt you,” Mr. Braver says. He echoes the others in noting that the trip is in many ways more effective than work retreats set in hotels, often involving hundreds of people who shuffle through quick meetings, wielding BlackBerrys. “It’s why I got into science, to talk about ideas.”
He wants to use imaging technology to see whether the effect of nature on the brain can be measured and whether there are other ways to reproduce it, say, through meditation.
Mr. Kramer says he wants to look at whether the benefits to the brain — the clearer thoughts, for example — come from the experience of being in nature, the exertion of hiking and rafting, or a combination.
...how and why people are distracted by irrelevant streams of information.
“If we can find out that people are walking around fatigued and not realizing their cognitive potential,” Mr. Braver says, then pauses and adds: “What can we do to get us back to our full potential?”
As they near the airport, Mr. Kramer also mentions a personal discovery: “I have a colleague who says that I’m being very impolite when I pull out a computer during meetings. I say: ‘I can listen.’ ”
“Maybe I’m not listening so well. Maybe I can work at being more engaged.”
The Group;
- David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah and the trip's organizer.
- Todd Braver, 41, the fast-talking, brain imaging expert, psychology professor at Washington U. in St. Louis.
- Steven Yantis, 54, the tall and contemplative chairman of the psychological and brain sciences department at Johns Hopkins, who studies how people switch between tasks;
- Paul Atchley, 40, a professor at the University of Kansas who studies teenagers’ compulsive use of cellphones
- Art Kramer, 57, a white-bearded professor at the University of Illinois who has gained attention for his studies of the neurological benefits of exercise...Among the bright academic lights in the group, Mr. Kramer is the most prominent. At the time of the trip he was about to take over a $300,000-a-year position as director of the Beckman Institute, a leading research center at the University of Illinois with around 1,000 scientists and staff workers and tens of millions of dollars in grant financing. He is also intense personally — someone who has been challenging himself since early in life; he says he left home when he was a teenager, became an amateur boxer and, later, flew airplanes, rock-climbed and smashed his knee in a “high-speed skiing accident.”
- Also on the trip are a reporter and a photographer, and Richard Boyer, a quiet outdoorsman and accomplished landscape painter
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/technology/16brain.html?ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=print
Art Kramer, straight lampin. Photo courtesy of Chang W. Lee/The New York Times“Attention is the holy grail,” [David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah] says. “Everything that you’re conscious of, everything you let in, everything you remember and you forget, depends on it.”
----
...technology has redefined the notion of what is “urgent.” How soon do people need to get information and respond to it?...the drumbeat of incoming data has created a false sense of urgency that can affect people’s ability to focus.
...a seminal study from the University of Michigan that showed people can better learn after walking in the woods than after walking a busy street. The study indicates that learning centers in the brain become taxed when asked to process information, even during the relatively passive experience of taking in an urban setting. By extension, some scientists believe heavy multitasking fatigues the brain, draining it of the ability to focus.
Mr. Strayer, the trip leader, argues that nature can refresh the brain. “Our senses change. They kind of recalibrate — you notice sounds, like these crickets chirping; you hear the river, the sounds, the smells, you become more connected to the physical environment, the earth, rather than the artificial environment.”
Mr. Braver accepts the Michigan research but wants to understand precisely what happens inside the brain. And he wonders: Why don’t brains adapt to the heavy stimulation, turning us into ever-stronger multitaskers?
“Right,” says Mr. Kramer, the skeptic. “Why wouldn’t the circuits be exercised, in a sense, and we’d get stronger?”
This has become such a sizzling field of research that two years ago the National Institutes of Health established a division to support studies of the parts of the brain involved with focus.
Behavioral studies have shown that performance suffers when people multitask. These researchers are wondering whether attention and focus can take a hit when people merely anticipate the arrival of more digital stimulation.
“The expectation of e-mail seems to be taking up our working memory,” Mr. Yantis says.
Working memory is a precious resource in the brain. The scientists hypothesize that a fraction of brain power is tied up in anticipating e-mail and other new information — and that they might be able to prove it using imaging.
“To the extent you have less working memory, you have less space for storing and integrating ideas and therefore less to do the reasoning you need to do,” says Mr. Kramer, floating nearby.
“There’s a real mental freedom in knowing no one or nothing can interrupt you,” Mr. Braver says. He echoes the others in noting that the trip is in many ways more effective than work retreats set in hotels, often involving hundreds of people who shuffle through quick meetings, wielding BlackBerrys. “It’s why I got into science, to talk about ideas.”
He wants to use imaging technology to see whether the effect of nature on the brain can be measured and whether there are other ways to reproduce it, say, through meditation.
Mr. Kramer says he wants to look at whether the benefits to the brain — the clearer thoughts, for example — come from the experience of being in nature, the exertion of hiking and rafting, or a combination.
...how and why people are distracted by irrelevant streams of information.
“If we can find out that people are walking around fatigued and not realizing their cognitive potential,” Mr. Braver says, then pauses and adds: “What can we do to get us back to our full potential?”
As they near the airport, Mr. Kramer also mentions a personal discovery: “I have a colleague who says that I’m being very impolite when I pull out a computer during meetings. I say: ‘I can listen.’ ”
“Maybe I’m not listening so well. Maybe I can work at being more engaged.”
The Group;
- David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah and the trip's organizer.
- Todd Braver, 41, the fast-talking, brain imaging expert, psychology professor at Washington U. in St. Louis.
- Steven Yantis, 54, the tall and contemplative chairman of the psychological and brain sciences department at Johns Hopkins, who studies how people switch between tasks;
- Paul Atchley, 40, a professor at the University of Kansas who studies teenagers’ compulsive use of cellphones
- Art Kramer, 57, a white-bearded professor at the University of Illinois who has gained attention for his studies of the neurological benefits of exercise...Among the bright academic lights in the group, Mr. Kramer is the most prominent. At the time of the trip he was about to take over a $300,000-a-year position as director of the Beckman Institute, a leading research center at the University of Illinois with around 1,000 scientists and staff workers and tens of millions of dollars in grant financing. He is also intense personally — someone who has been challenging himself since early in life; he says he left home when he was a teenager, became an amateur boxer and, later, flew airplanes, rock-climbed and smashed his knee in a “high-speed skiing accident.”
- Also on the trip are a reporter and a photographer, and Richard Boyer, a quiet outdoorsman and accomplished landscape painter
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/technology/16brain.html?ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=print
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
China Takes Lead in Global Clean Energy Race
'NYT - China Leading Global Race to Make Clean Energy' - January 30, 2010
The following is largely a summary of the above article. Thanks to Keith Bradsher for the informative reporting.
China is now the world's leading manufacturer of wind turbines and solar panels, and is making headway in the nuclear reactor industry and coal efficient power plants.
The US is trying to catch up, and apparently has incentives in place, but clearly not enough. Obama called for a 'redoubling' of US efforts, "yet many Western and Chinese executives expect China to prevail in the energy-technology race."
Unlike the US, China is finding no difficulty in creating renewable energy jobs; 1.12 million such jobs existed in 2008 and are rising at 100,000 a year. Granted, salaries are significantly lower in China, with Vestas (a Danish wind turbine manufacturer, recently built the world's largest turbine factory in China) paying its assembly line workers $4,100 a year.
China has various advantages when it comes to dominating the global renewable energy race. Besides low labor costs, Chinese banks provide loans at a 2% interest rate, "the result of a savings rate of 40 percent and a government policy of steering loans to renewable energy." The Chinese government also understands the importance of energy for their nation and the world; Chian will need to greatly expand its generation capacity as demand has grown 15% a year consistently. Reflecting their sincerity, in January 2010 the government announced the creation of a National Energy Commission led by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao himself.
Chinese companies are increasingly looking to export their renewable energy tech, with western nations complaining that the Chinese have unfair advantages. Congress has considered halting federal spending on imported equipment in response to a November 2009 deal for China t osupply turbines for a large wind farm in Texas.
“Every country, including the United States and in Europe, wants a low cost of renewable energy,” said Ma Lingjuan, deputy managing director of China’s renewable energy association. “Now China has reached that level, but it gets criticized by the rest of the world.”
The following is largely a summary of the above article. Thanks to Keith Bradsher for the informative reporting.
China is now the world's leading manufacturer of wind turbines and solar panels, and is making headway in the nuclear reactor industry and coal efficient power plants.
The US is trying to catch up, and apparently has incentives in place, but clearly not enough. Obama called for a 'redoubling' of US efforts, "yet many Western and Chinese executives expect China to prevail in the energy-technology race."
Unlike the US, China is finding no difficulty in creating renewable energy jobs; 1.12 million such jobs existed in 2008 and are rising at 100,000 a year. Granted, salaries are significantly lower in China, with Vestas (a Danish wind turbine manufacturer, recently built the world's largest turbine factory in China) paying its assembly line workers $4,100 a year.
China has various advantages when it comes to dominating the global renewable energy race. Besides low labor costs, Chinese banks provide loans at a 2% interest rate, "the result of a savings rate of 40 percent and a government policy of steering loans to renewable energy." The Chinese government also understands the importance of energy for their nation and the world; Chian will need to greatly expand its generation capacity as demand has grown 15% a year consistently. Reflecting their sincerity, in January 2010 the government announced the creation of a National Energy Commission led by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao himself.
Chinese companies are increasingly looking to export their renewable energy tech, with western nations complaining that the Chinese have unfair advantages. Congress has considered halting federal spending on imported equipment in response to a November 2009 deal for China t osupply turbines for a large wind farm in Texas.
“Every country, including the United States and in Europe, wants a low cost of renewable energy,” said Ma Lingjuan, deputy managing director of China’s renewable energy association. “Now China has reached that level, but it gets criticized by the rest of the world.”
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