Put Your Computer to Work for Science

Interested in helping astronomers search outer space? It's possible with a program called Einstein@Home, which allows your computer, when it's idle, to help scientists search the skies for pulsars and other neutron stars. The idea behind the program, called distributed computing, is straightforward: downloaded software connects your home computer with thousands of others throughout the world that have the program, and which combined have the computational power of a supercomputer that can analyze very large amounts of data without the extremely high costs associated with unique, custom-made supercomputers. When your PC is not being used, the program downloads LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) data from a central server and searches for gravitational-wave sources. Such waves are discharged by neutron stars, which are dense celestial bodies chiefly composed of neutrons, believed to be formed by the gravitational collapse of a star, and pulsars, rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit regular radio waves. Discovering such celestial objects can provide important insights on matter at high densities.

Find out more and enter here to volunteer and download the software.

Airlines Buy Alternative Fuels

Fifteen airlines and air cargo carriers have joined forces to purchase hundreds of millions of gallons of alternative fuels. The airlines signed a memorandum of understanding with AltAir Fuels and Rentech (Renewable Energy Technologies), the fuel producers, to purchase about 325 million gallons of alternative fuels per year, with potential to increase this further. Industry studies so far have shown that synthetic renewable fuels burn cleaner and reduce greenhouse gases by 5-12% over traditional jet fuel. Read more here.

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Saving Captive Wild Animals

It’s hot and dusty; the sun is about to set; the grass that covers the plains is brown, wilting, wishing for rain that rarely falls. When the lions start to roar, you could forgive yourself for thinking you are in the African savanna.

But you are not. You are at the western edge of the North American Great Plains, stretching from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi River and from Northern Canada to Mexico, covering about 2.5 million square kilometers.

The roar of the lions is not a hallucination. Neither is the howling of the wolves, nor the growling of the bears. You can find all of these animals and more at The Wild Animal Sanctuary (http://www.wildanimalsanctuary.org/) just a few miles northeast of Denver, Colorado, in Keenesburg.

According to their website, “The Wild Animal Sanctuary is the oldest and largest nonprofit Sanctuary in the US dedicated exclusively to rescuing captive exotic and endangered large carnivores, providing them with a wonderful life for as long as they live, and educating about the tragic plight faced by an estimated 30,000 such animals in America today.”

The very knowledgeable staff member who greeted us as we entered the facility on a sweltering Wednesday evening informed us that there are more tigers being held in private hands, in basements and garages, in the state of Texas than are living in the wild in the world. That is some scary stuff, and underlines the need for the Sanctuary. Unfortunately, people who take on large carnivores often find that they cannot actually take care of them – as they grow up they become a danger to their host families. When they are abandoned, someone needs to take them in or they will be put down.

“Countless other great cats, bears, wolves and other large carnivores live in abusive conditions in roadside stands, circuses, magic acts, traveling shows, and other substandard situations. Untold numbers of animals suffer and die each year due to neglect, abuse or because they are abandoned and left to die, starving and alone,” says their website.

“Comprising 320 acres and sheltering more than 200 lions, tigers, bears, leopards, mountain lions, wolves and other large carnivores, it is the first sanctuary of its kind to create large acreage species-specific habitats for its rescued animals,” it continues.

We are told upon arrival that the facility is 100% non-smoking and if we choose to ignore this rule, we will be summarily removed from the site. This is because the bears in the Sanctuary that have been saved from roadside shows are nicotine addicts. The nicotine is what the trainers used to get the bears to do their tricks. Thus even the smell of a cigarette can have devastating consequences. It is a good thing no one in our group smokes.

The three main points of the organization’s mission are to rescue captive large carnivores that have been abused, abandoned, illegally kept or exploited; to create for them a wonderful life for as long as they live; and to educate about the causes and solutions to the captive wildlife crisis.
On site, it is obvious that they are committed to their mission. The animals that have completed their rehabilitation program roam freely in their large enclosures, encountering others of their kind. They look healthy from afar. As they are wild animals, I will obviously not climb into the enclosures for a close inspection, but trust in the organization to do what is necessary.

Remarkable Results from Simple Solutions

Providing free school uniforms in Kenya actually decreased girls' dropout rates by 15%, teen marriage by 12% and childbearing by 10%. The rationale for providing the uniforms was to decrease the cost of education, empower children and increase motivation. By raising the girls' ability to conceptualize themselves and increasing their self-esteem, while lowering costs, those who received free uniforms were significantly more likely to stay in school, thus reducing the likelihood of getting married and having babies. These results were published in World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 4024 following a randomized evaluation of 70,000 students in 328 primary schools in rural Kenya.

Introducing cable television in rural India has been shown to improve the status of women there. In particular, a study published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (MIT Press) in 2009 found "significant increases in reported autonomy, decreases in the reported acceptability of beating and decreases in reported son preference [over daughters]. [The authors] also find increases in female school enrollment and decreases in fertility (primarily via increased birth spacing). The effects are large, equivalent in some cases to about five years of education ...". The report suggests that exposing women and men to new and more diverse sets of information via the cable TV has produced these positive results.

Seeking Huge Improvements in Energy Efficiency

The GreenTouch association was formed "to find new approaches for energy efficiency and to invent radical new technologies that will be at the heart of sustainable networks in the decades to come." Concretely, the group "aims to create the technologies needed to make communications networks 1,000 times more energy efficient than they are today." The networks specifically targeted are the Internet and those that support communications, commerce and entertainment. GreenTouch is also an excellent example of a successful partnership involving different types of establishments, in this case academia, industry, government and non-profit research institutes, working together in a common goal. What's more, the founding organizations hail from across the globe and include AT&T, China Mobile, Samsung, MIT Research Laboratory for Electronics, France Telecom, Swisscom, Portugal Telecom, and the University of Melbourne's Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society. Recognizing that today's networks are geared to performance and not to energy efficiency and that their entire architecture and design must be changed to be optimized for both, the GreenTouch Initiative has been launched "to invent the technologies that can achieve sustainable networks" for the future.

Entertainment in the Service of the Underpriviledged in Mexico

CinePop is a business venture that brings family entertainment, services and products to underserved communities while engaging the business sector and local government. The organization sets up open-air movie theaters in Mexico using large, inflatable film screens, projecting general-audience films dubbed into Spanish, free of charge. The multitude of movies include Peter Pan, Zorro, Aladdin, A Farewell to Arms, Chicken Little, Hannah and Her Sisters, Mary Poppins, etc. Businesses sponsor projections and provide products and services to the movie-goers. Brands can sample their products, offer promotions, sell and advertise their goods while the attendants not only enjoy a popular cultural event and movies but get access to shoes, toiletries, food, medicine, telecommunications, clothing, banking services and other commodities.
CinePop is just one example of the power and success of joint enterprise and innovative partnerships as it brings together the entertainment industry and the public and private sectors in social investing efforts that profit all.

Wisdom from The Elders

Engaged in a number of missions, a group of well-known global leaders called The Elders, comprised of Nelson Mandela, its originator, and Martti Ahtisaari, Kofi Annan, Ela Bhatt, Lakhdar Brahimi, Gro Brundtland, Fernando H. Cardoso, Jimmy Carter, Graca Machel, Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu, has made equality for womankind one of their priorities. They appeal for "an end to the use of religious and traditional practices to justify and entrench discrimination against women and girls." The group is also assisting efforts to address the predicaments in Zimbabwe, Burma (Myanmar) and Cyprus. Their prestige, renown and moral standing allow them to be particularly influential in advancing the initiatives they tackle. As Lakhdar Brahimi so aptly puts it: "We're extremely careful not to claim that we're going to take a problem and solve it. What we're saying is that from time to time, in certain situations, a problem needs a little push."
Read more about The Elders and their initiatives.

Profile: Ada Lovelace - 19th Century Computer Pioneer‏

Ada Lovelace, born Augusta Ada Byron, Lord Byron's daughter, was the first to suggest a computer program, back in 1842. She was a formidable mathematician and writer. When translating Italian engineer and mathematician Luigi Menabrea's memoir on Charles Babbage's proposed general-purpose machine, the Analytical Engine, Lovelace added her own notes, which contain a method for calculating a sequence of numbers with the Engine, which would have run correctly had the Analytical Engine ever been built. She is thus credited with being the first to propose an algorithm, or set of rules to be followed in calculations, intended to be processed by a machine. As such Ada is the world's first computer programmer. Babbage's Analytical Engine has now been recognized as an early model for a computer and Lovelace's notes as a description of a computer and software.

More on this early computer pioneer can be found in:
-Joan Baum, The Calculating Passion of Ada Byron. Archon Books, 1986. ISBN: 0208021191.
-Dorothy Stein, Ada: A Life and a Legacy. MIT Press Series in the History of Computing. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. ISBN: 026219242X.
-Betty Alexandra Toole Ed.D., Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers, Prophet of the Computer Age. 1998.
-Catherine Turney, Byron's Daughter. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. ISBN: 0684127539.
-Benjamin Woolley, The Bride of Science: Romance, Reason, and Byron's Daughter. ISBN: 0333724364.