Kaksoisagentti

Yhden aistin puuttumiskulttuuri

Ear implant success sparks culture war
"The idea of operating on a healthy baby makes us all recoil," says Harlan Lane, a psycholinguist at Northeastern University in Boston. "Deaf people argue that they use a different language, and with it comes a different culture, but there is certainly nothing wrong with them that needs fixing with a surgeon's scalpel. We should listen."

The Geoengineering Option
The early examination of options we'd rather not use is vital. If the climate collapses faster than expected, or if our efforts fail (or are blocked by recalcitrant leaders), we will see people desperate for survival trying out these kinds of last-ditch solutions. It would be a good idea if they knew what the consequences could be before they choose which one(s) to try. If the planet faces disaster, not everyone will be willing to simply throw up their hands and say, "well, we're boned!" -- some of us will do what we can to catch human civilization before it's gone completely over the cliff.

Open Source Science: A New Model for Innovation
Innovations happen at the intersection of disciplines. People have talked about that a lot and I think we're providing some systematic evidence now with this study. Another example is that a pharmaceutical company got unusual toxicology results for an ongoing drug study. The best toxicologists within the firm had a look at the results and couldn't understand them. Their external academic consultants, also toxicologists, also failed to interpret the results. Then they finally posted it onto InnoCentive. A protein crystallographer looked at the problem and basically gave an off-the-shelf solution. The pharmaceutical company had never viewed the problem as a crystallography problem; they thought it was a toxicology problem.

Fonera WLAN tukiasema ilmaiseksi, kun tilaat ennen joulua.

Posted by kaksoisagentti at November 28, 2006 12:16 AM