Smart Economy

Mathematicians aim to take publishers out of publishing

Episciences Project to launch series of community-run, open-access journals.

17 January 2013

Jean-Pierre Demailly is a leader in an effort to create a researcher-run publishing system.

Mathematicians plan to launch a series of free open-access journals that will host their peer-reviewed
articles on the preprint server arXiv. The project was publicly revealed yesterday in a blog post by Tim Gowers, a Fields Medal winner and mathematician at the University of Cambridge, UK.

 

The initiative, called the Episciences Project, hopes to show that researchers can organize the peer
review and publication of their work at minimal cost, without involving commercial publishers.

“It’s a global vision of how the research community should work: we want to offer an alternative to traditional mathematics journals,” says Jean-Pierre Demailly, a mathematician at the University of Grenoble, France, who is a leader in the effort. Backed by funding from the French government, the initiative may launch as early as April, he says.

Many mathematicians — and researchers in other fields — claim that they already do most of the work
involved in publishing their research. At no cost, they type up and format
their own papers, post them to online servers, join journal editorial boards
and review the work of their peers. By creating journals that publish links to
peer-reviewed work on servers such as arXiv, Demailly says, the community could
run its own publishing system. The extra expense involved would be the cost of
maintaining websites and computer equipment, he says.

That cost is not small, but it
could eventually be provided in part by the journals' users. The arXiv server,
for example, costs about US$826,000 a year to run, and is funded by the Cornell
University Library in Ithaca, New
York; the Simons Foundation in New York and institutional members.

Demailly says that he first thought of open-access electronic journals that overlay arXiv eight years ago, but the concept became a reality only last June, when he was contacted by the
Centre for Direct Scientific Communication (CCSD), based in Villeurbanne,
France. The CCSD, a unit of the French National Centre for Scientific Research,
develops open-access repositories such as the multidisciplinary archive HAL,
which mirrors the arXiv site.

For the Episciences Project, the CCSD plans to create a publishing platform that will support online
peer-reviewed journals. Each journal, or ‘epijournal’, would have its own
editor and editorial board, and authors could submit their arXiv-posted papers
to their journal of choice. The journal would then organize peer review,
perhaps using workflow software provided by the CCSD. Peer-reviewed papers
would be posted on arXiv alongside their un-reviewed versions. A central
committee (led by Demailly) would manage new journal candidates and make
recommendations on paper formatting, but each journal would be free to set its
own policies (including whether to charge for publication).

Gowers plans to start a journal in the interdisciplinary field of additive combinatorics; Demailly would not
say what other early epijournals might be. Gowers has strong views on shaking
up research publishing — last year, he kick-started
a boycott of the Dutch publishing giant Elsevier (see also Nature’s
profile of Gowers).

The idea of overlaying arXiv is
not new: some mathematics journals tried it in the early 2000s but scrapped the
idea because libraries began dropping print subscriptions, says Demailly.
Meanwhile, there are already some free, community-organized mathematics
journals, such as Documenta Mathematica, funded by the German Mathematical Society. “They are doing things on their own with a small website; we will have a global platform
capable of drastically reducing an individual journal’s administration costs,”
Demailly says.

Demailly says that he expects to adjust the concept with feedback from the mathematics community. “If people want larger reviews linked to papers, or the possibility of online comments and
blogs, we can offer this with only minor changes to the platform,” he says. At
the moment, the model's success or failure hinges on buy-in from mathematicians
— but the involvement of Gowers and other prominent mathematicians, such as
Terence Tao of the University of California, Los
  Angeles, may help to build support.

Journal name: Nature

DOI:doi:10.1038/nature.2013.12243

 

 

Smart Desk

Star Trek Classroom: The next generation of school desks

		IMAGE:This shows the SynergyNet classroom. Click here for more information.

Researchers designing and testing the 'classroom of the future' have found that multi-touch, multi-user desks can boost skills in mathematics.

New results from a 3-year project working with over 400 pupils, mostly 8-10 year olds, show that collaborative learning increases both fluency and flexibility in maths. It also shows that using an interactive 'smart' desk can have benefits over doing mathematics on paper.

Using multi-touch desks in the new classroom, the children were able to work together in new ways to solve and answer questions and problems using inventive solutions. Seeing what your friends are doing, and being able to fully participate in group activities, offers new ways of working in class, the researchers say. The 'Star Trek classroom' could also help learning and teaching in other subjects.

The findings published in the journal Learning and Instruction, show that children who use a collaborative maths activity in the SynergyNet classroom improve in both mathematical flexibility and fluency, while children working on traditional paper-based activities only improve in flexibility.

During the project, the team found that 45% of students who used NumberNet increased in the number of unique mathematical expressions they created after using NumberNet, compared to 16% of students in the traditional paper-based activity.

Lead researcher, Professor Liz Burd, School of Education, Durham University, said: "Our aim was to encourage far higher levels of active student engagement, where knowledge is obtained by sharing, problem-solving and creating, rather than by passive listening. This classroom enables both active engagement and equal access.

"We found our tables encouraged students to collaborate more effectively. We were delighted to observe groups of students enhancing others' understanding of mathematical concepts. Such collaboration just did not happen when students used paper-based approaches."

The Durham University team designed software and desks that recognize multiple touches on the desktop using vision systems that see infrared light. The project called SynergyNet set out to integrate a fully collaborative system of desks, building it into the fabric and furniture of the classroom. The new desks with a 'multi-touch' surface are the central component, and these are networked and linked to a main smartboard.

In terms of current teaching, the new system means that the 'move-to-use' whiteboard is by-passed and the new desks can be both screen and keyboard. The desks act like multi-touch whiteboards and several students can use any one desk at once.

The technology allows all students to take part as opposed to one individual dominating.

Researcher, Emma Mercier, School of Education, Durham University, said: "Cooperative learning works very well in the new classroom because the pupils interact and learn in a different way. The children really enjoy doing maths in this way and are always disappointed when you turn the desks off!

"We can achieve fluency in maths through practice, however, boosting a pupil's ability to find a range of solutions to arithmetic questions is harder to teach. This classroom can help teachers to use collaborative learning to improve their pupils' flexibility in maths."

The teacher plays a key role in the classroom and can send tasks to different tables to individuals and groups. The teacher can also send one group's answers on to the next group to work on and add to, or to the board for a class discussion.  A live feed of the desks goes directly to the teacher who can intervene quickly to help an individual while allowing the group work to continue.

Professor Steve Higgins said: "Technology like this has enormous potential for teaching as it can help the teacher to manage and to orchestrate the learning of individuals and groups of learners to ensure they are both challenged and supported so that they can learn effectively."

Such a classroom may be some way off being a regular feature of schools across the world due to the costs in setting it up, and the level of support needed to make it work, however, in just 3 years the project team have noted major improvements in the technology, and a reduction in costs.

The researchers also recognise that task management in the class environment is an issue requiring thought and planning, but the overall potential of the new classroom for improved numeracy, learning, and on-going assessment is very good.

The project has worked with 12 different schools in the North East.  SynergyNet is one of eight technology enhanced learning research projects funded by the ESRC and EPSRC as part of the £12M Teaching and Learning Research Programme into Technology Enhanced Learning.

The project is an inter-disciplinary collaboration at Durham University between the School of Education, the Department of Psychology and the Department of Computer Science.

Zbigniew Brzezinski: National Strategy and US Education

By Leonard Liggio

Foreign Policy magazine (January-February 2012) lists Zbigniew Brzezinski among the five most important living influences on US foreign policy. In the weekend Financial Times (January 14-15, 2012), Edward Luce (FT’s chief US commentator) describes his recent luncheon interview with the former National Security Advisor under President Jimmy Carter and current trustee of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. After 1981, he continued in Washington as a professor at Georgetown University. Over his Dubonnet, he begins with his disappointment with President Barak Obama: “I’m all in favor of grand important speeches but the president then has to link his sermons to a strategy.” Although he has voted for Republican presidential candidates (such as George H. W. Bush in 1988) he is highly doubtful of the current Republican candidates. Compared to how well informed about the world he considers Chinese leaders: “And then you watch one of our Republican presidential debates …. The GOP field is just embarrassing.”

Brzezinski is 83 years old and was born in Warsaw. His father was a diplomat and Brzezinski spent his first three years in Paris and the next three in Berlin. His father was assigned to the embassy in Canada, so the family remained there when World War II began. He attributes his skills to attending Loyola High School in Montreal. (My graduate professor at Fordham University, Oskar Halecki (who had been secretary of the Polish delegation at the Versailles conference and then dean of Warsaw University) was a visiting professor at Grenoble University when the war began and was fortunate to move to Laval University in Quebec before the invasion of France.)

I first became aware of Brzezinski when I was working for the William Volker Fund assigned to read journal articles or books that might relate to its scholarly program. I extensively reviewed a book of Brzezinski written (c. 1961) (when he was at Harvard University) on the economic system of the Soviet Bloc. I recommended the book as knowledgeable and insightful.

He was appointed a professor of international relations at Columbia University. He became an advisor to Hubert Humphrey’s vice-presidential campaign and defended Lyndon B. Johnson’s war in Vietnam on the basis of the ‘Falling Dominos’ theory (if South Vietnam came under the Viet Cong, then Thailand, Malaya, Indonesia would become Communist.) (That theory arose in the 1950s: that Japan would want to trade with Red China if communists blocked Japan’s markets in Southeast Asia. Japan was trading with China through third countries, so the theory was questionable.)

Brzezinski opposed Republican senators critical of Johnson’s war. Senators Sterling Morton of Kentucky and Mark Hatfield of Oregon led the revival of the Republican party with over forty new Republican congressmen in 1966.

To him, today’s America appears to lack education in world politics. He sees a US failure in history and geography (French education always twined geography and history). “Americans don’t learn about the world, they don’t study world history, other than American history in a very one-sided fashion, and they don’t study geography. In that context of widespread ignorance, the ongoing and deliberately fanned fear about the outside world, which is connected with this grandiose war on jihadi terrorism, makes the American public extremely susceptible to extremist appeals.”

Fifty years ago when I began as a college instructor, there was a textbook which combined European and American history. However, as I was teaching fifteen hours a week the course in World Civilizations there was a dilemma. The chairman of the history and government department was a Viennese who had studied Japanese in the US army. He selected a textbook which went beyond European civilization to include: Hindu, Chinese, Japanese , etc. I had no background in those areas and told my five classes to ignore those chapters. American students have a hard enough time with European names, trying to have them or myself master exotic names was not education but chaos. I am reminded of one of my colleagues, a Chinese refugee from Red China, who upset his students of Chinese history when he later explained that the first seven dynasties they had struggled to learn were mythical.

Brzezinski considers America’s greatest national security threat to be the weak US economic situation, especially the political failure to address the government’s economic problems. His strategic advice: “the US should prod Europe to bring both Russia and Turkey into an enlarged west. America should hedge against China’s rise, without explicitly attempting to contain it. Most importantly, the US should revitalize its domestic economy if it wants to stave off further decline. On all counts, Brzezinski seems pessimistic about the likelihood that Washington’s elites will start to act strategically again.”

Is American right wing society becoming anti-Science

From an editorial from nature.com, ....Walter Derzko

Science scorned

Volume: 467, Page: 133 Date published: (09 September 2010) DOI: doi:10.1038/467133a

The anti-science strain pervading the right wing in the United States is the last thing the country needs in a time of economic challenge.

...

There is a growing anti-science streak on the American right that could have tangible societal and political impacts on many fronts — including regulation of environmental and other issues and stem-cell research.

...

The right-wing populism that is flourishing in the current climate of economic insecurity echoes many traditional conservative themes, such as opposition to taxes, regulation and immigration. But the Tea Party and its cheerleaders, who include Limbaugh, Fox News television host Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (who famously decried fruitfly research as a waste of public money), are also tapping an age-old US political impulse — a suspicion of elites and expertise.

Denialism over global warming has become a scientific cause célèbre within the movement. Limbaugh, for instance, who has told his listeners that “science has become a home for displaced socialists and communists”, has called climate-change science “the biggest scam in the history of the world”. The Tea Party's leanings encompass religious opposition to Darwinian evolution and to stem-cell and embryo research — which Beck has equated with eugenics. The movement is also averse to science-based regulation, which it sees as an excuse for intrusive government. Under the administration of George W. Bush, science in policy had already taken knocks from both neglect and ideology. Yet President Barack Obama's promise to “restore science to its rightful place” seems to have linked science to liberal politics, making it even more of a target of the right.

==========================================

They say in a sidebar that: “The country's future crucially depends on education, science and technology.”

I don't disagree, but we also need to separate science from the global warming ideology that has hijacked it. The current backlash they speak of has in fact been brought about in part by allowing this to happen. I'll point out though that the sort of idealogy we see in the global warming movement doesn't seem to pervade other sciences, at least until somebody demands that one of the science organizations embraces or endorses the cause. That's when the dissent starts. For example:

American Physical Society rejects climate policy plea from 160 physicists

Dissenting members ask APS to put their policy statement on ice due to Climategate

Witness Nature using the word denialism, born of the politically nurtured global warming ideology. If Nature's editorial staff was not indoctrinated to at least some of that ideology, I wager they'd have used a different word. And they wonder why there is dissent while at the same time they use the word to insult people. I encourage subscribers to call them to task on this use of the word.

h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard

Being more "mindful" in a mindless world, beyond Design Thinking

Last night I attended Roger Martin's talk on Design Thinking at OCAD in Toronto.

Martin, who is the dean of the Rotman Business School at the University of Toronto, has been championing the notion of Design Thinking, which is the combination of analytic, logical rational thinking, which is based on proof and reliability and intutive, lateral thinking which is based on unprovable provocations and lateral leaps beyond conventional wisdom. He calls this intersection-design thinking.

But I believe that teaching  design thinking alone as a process is not good enough.

My critisism during question period was that even though Rotman should be praised at promoting "design thinking" in business,  in reality we totally ignore the actual  "thinking component" of design thinking. We don't normally teach either rational, analytic thinking (which business is better at)  and/or  creative intuitive thinking skills (which designers and artists excel at) in public school or high school, with the exception of many "gifted programs" for the really smart kids!

Here's the business case for directly teaching thinking as a stand alone subject: Education studies show that children who are taught thinking skills experience a significant grade point leap/improvement in other subject areas across the curriculum.

You can start teaching thinking skills as early as grade one with the program that I currently use. I just adjust the examples and applications to  be age and grade-appropriate. 

Teachers design course materials with learning objectives (outputs) but they ignore the thinking objectives (inputs) [ see Instruction-Based Action Guidelines Built on Bloom’s Revised Framework: Setting Objectives for Entrepreneurship Training; Small Enterprise Research 14(2) 2006 by Ed Leach, Faculty of Management, Dalhousie University]

Imagine a grade one math teacher ignoring the basic operacy skills or  operations behind math, which are plus, subtract, multiply and divide-skipping over this foundation and jumping right to teaching numbers. No, we first teach the basic 4 thinking operations behind numbers and then go on to higher order math applications like fractions, algebra and calculus, and (+,-, X, ./.) becomes second natured but still works in the background.

So, when we switch domains from numbers to ideas, concepts, astractions, details, values and notions, why don't we teach the thinking operations or cognitive skills behind the exploration of the depth and breath of ideas and idea generation, just like we do in the math domain. Well we do to a limited extent, but just in the gifted programs, who I would argue need it the least.

Yet, we totally ignore  the mainstream student population.

The only excuse that I can think of is that politicians and educators don't want the general population to think for themselves (leave your brain at the door, when you come in to work) or challenge underlying notions or assumptions of how business, government or society works.

Teachers are reluctant, fearful and scared of teaching thinking, because they themselves were never taught how to teach it ..they see it as something mysterious and ambiguous..how can you teach thinking or creativity? It should come naturally, say many teachers.  Oddly enough many designers claim that you can't teach creativity or innovation, fearing a loss of prestige, mystery or exclusivity.

Roger Martin's reply was" Your preaching to the converted.....well yes, but to be fair, most MBA programs  don't actually overtly teach thinking skills to its students in a seperate course and then integrate these overt cognitive skills across the MBA curriculum in other subject areas.

I asked the crowd of about 200 seemingly intelligent people: "how many of you have ever been taught a thinking skills course?" Out of 200 people, only about 6 people put up their hands, so that's about 3%.

(I'm not sure if Rotman actually directly teaches the thinking skills behind the design thinking process or just the process--Walter Derzko)

The first MBA program in the world that does that will have a distinct global competitve advantage.

When I was director of the Idea Lab at the Design Exchange, we deliverately embedded the teaching and the application of cognitive skills into the idea Lab process.

Think of it as thinking about your own thinking or meta-cognition. Psychologists call one example of this being more "mindful." or "challange"

This reminds me of a recent article in The Chronicles of Higher Education.

"Last summer Ellen J. Langer posted an entry on her Psychology Today blog that caused a minor uproar.  A friend had just described a group trip taken to India, many years earlier.  "They met a guru and asked a bystander to take a picture of them with him," wrote Langer, a prominent social psychologist and a professor at Harvard University.  "Two pictures were taken, using two different cameras."  Yet when the film was developed, the guru -- who had been standing in the middle -- was missing from both photographs.

Langer didn't speculate why -- she didn't propose, say, that the guru had reached a state of such spiritual purity that light passed through him.  Her point was this: No amount of evidence would be enough to persuade most scientists of paranormal phenomena, because too many of them were "stuck in soon-to-be-outdated theories."  Rather than ignore data that don't fit those theories, she said, "we need to open our minds to possibility."

...[..]..

 

That's not unusual.  In the course of her 35-year career, Langer has repeatedly flouted convention, confident that (or indifferent to whether) other researchers will eventually catch up with her.  A petite, kinetic woman with a turned-up nose and a voice like Lauren Bacall's, Langer does not tend to ruminate, and her immediate response when told "No," about anything, is to ask, "Why not?"

Early on she took psychology's prevailing wisdom about decision-making and turned it on its head, setting the stage for later work by researchers in cognitive and social psychology as well as behavioral economics.  She is best known for her concept of "mindfulness" -- a term that most researchers use in the context of meditation, but by which Langer means paying attention: consciously looking for what is new and different, and questioning preconceived ideas.

Doing that is more difficult, and more significant, than it sounds.  Most of our actions, Langer has shown, are mindless.  Mindfulness requires reconsidering everything we think we know.  If we did that, she says, all of us could be more effective, more creative, and healthier.

Her research on the effects of mindfulness on physical health, in particular, has had such surprising results that, she acknowledges herself, it "teeters on the edge of believability for some."

In the lexicon of Edward de Bono”  thinking skills program, the equivalent thinking operation or cognitive skill behind being mindful would be “concept challenge”. What do we take for granted? What are our assumptions here? Can we challenge that?

 

Here are two examples of concept challenge as offered by Langer:

 

Langer has come to question whether any medical knowledge -- about aging, about diagnosis, about the natural course of diseases -- is necessarily true.  Medical science is imperfect.  Probabilities -- that cells are cancerous, for example, or that a person with those cells will survive -- are abstract mathematical constructs, she points out: They do not account for outliers, and they are based on a limited number of cases, which are analyzed by fallible human beings, who are making judgment calls.

"I am not arguing against medical tests," she writes in Counterclockwise.  "I am arguing against mindless reliance on them and the mindless state they lead to."

She is now emboldened to offer an explanation for the results of the counterclockwise study: that the subjects' mental states had direct, physical effects, an explanation that has been borne out in her subsequent, peer-reviewed research. 

1)Take eye tests.  In a group of studies soon to be published in the journal Psychological Science, Langer and her colleagues showed that people's vision improved when they expected to see better.  In one strikingly simple experiment, the researchers reversed the standard eye chart so that the letters became progressively larger rather than smaller.  "Now, rather than expecting as they went down the chart that pretty soon they were not going to be able to read the letters," Langer says, "people expected that pretty soon they were going to be able to read the letters."  The result: They could read letters that had been too small for them on the standard chart.

2)Take another scientific given: that to lose weight you must exercise more or eat less.  In a recent study, Langer and Alia J. Crum, now a doctoral student at Yale University, got hotel housekeepers who reported doing little or no exercise to recognize the physical nature of their jobs: telling half of a group of 84 that their days spent bending, stretching, and lifting were similar to workouts at a gym.  Four weeks later, those 42 chambermaids had lost an average of two pounds each, reduced their percentage of body fat, and lowered their blood pressure -- all while reporting no changes in eating habits, even less physical activity during their off hours, and (according to their bosses) the same level of work. 

Source: “The Art of Living Mindfully; Nothing is ever certain, says the psychologist Ellen Langer.  We should make the most of that”   The Chronicle of Higher Education 56.17 (Jan 3, 2010)

Walter Derzko, The Opportunity Clinic, Smart Economy,   

Re-emergence of Science and Technology in the Middle East

Western school children don't realize that most of the basic math and science (chemistry and physics) found in science high school textbooks comes from Arabic (Middle East) scientists, discovered even before the dark ages in Europe. Scientists from the Middle East were once world leaders in most scientific inquiry and discovery. Today, the romantic and "almost backward wasteland" image from TV and Hollywood that most people have of a typical "middle east" country is one of sand, and caravans of camel transportation and not advanced science and technology. And this misperception isn't the worst of it.

While, the west is trying to further demonize the "Middle East" in all of the media, because of real and perceived terrorist threats, it's not an image that the Arabic world deserves, when it comes to science. 

At this year's AAAS meetings in San Diego, we see an attempt to launch a S&T re-birth in a session called:  "Re-emergence of Science, Technology and Education as Priorities in the Arab World".

The above graph shows the contribution of Middle East science to the world science community over the past 30 years.

Source: Science Metrix report called 30 Years in Science Secular Movements in Knowledge Creation. Countries with a Growth Index (GI) =1 are at the world average, so Israel (GI=0.94) (bottom of the curve in reddish-brown) and Iraq (GI=0.47) are falling behind the average world pace, while the rest (GI> 1.0) all grew faster then the world average. (ie Turkey with GI =5.47 or Iran with the best GI in the world of 11.07 or eleven times the world average.

On a whole the Middle East scientific output, while uneven across countries,  grew four times faster than the average world level. 

From a AAAS press release:

"Nanotechnology could aid the future of development of the Arab region," says Mohamed H.A. Hassan, executive director of TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world, and president of the African Academyof Sciences. Hassan made his remarks at a panel session, "Re-emergence of Science, Technology and Education as Priorities in the Arab World," taking place at the AAAS's annual meeting in San Diego.

"The Arab region, home to some 300 million people, faces a host of daunting development challenges," Hassan notes. "Three of the most fundamental involve ensuring adequate supplies of water, energy and food." Advances in nanotechnology, he says, "could help achieve progress by helping to address each of these challenges."

For example, he notes that nano-filters could enhance the efficiency of desalinization plants, helping to ensure adequate supplies of water in the region. Similarly, nanotechnology could improve the capacity of solar panels. More abundant supplies of water and energy, Hassan adds, "would boost irrigation and help increase agricultural output."

But none of this is likely to take place, he cautions, "without a strong commitment to training the next generation of scientists." The Arab region has some inherent demographic advantages when seeking to address human resource issues related to scientific capacity building. "Sixty percent of the population is less than 25 years old," he says.

"Yet, the region has some glaring weaknesses as well," he says. "Arab countries spend just 0.3% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on science and technology, compared to 1% in a growing number of developing countries and 2% to 3% in many developed countries. Scientists in the region publish less than 1% of the world's peer-reviewed scientific articles.

Hassan points to some encouraging recent signs, however.

"A growing number of countries have invested in high-profile projects designed to quickly build scientific capacity in critical areas of science and technology." He cites, for example, the opening of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) for post-graduate studies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar's Science and Technology Park (QSTP).

But much more will need to be done, he says. To boost science, he calls on each Arab country "to create at least one world-class university" and "build at least one world-class state-of-the-art science centre."Hassan also believes the national merit-based academies in the region should become more engaged in their societies and stronger advocates for science education and science-based development.

He readily acknowledges that "with so many immediate challenges facing the region, it's difficult for governments to engage in long-term strategies for development." But he says that "unless countries within the Arab region make a sustained effort to build scientific capacity, they will find themselves unable to overcome the 'knowledge-deficit' obstacles that have impeded economic development for far too long."

"Nanotechnology may not be the first thing that comes to mind in discussions dealing with strategies to address the Arab region's most pressing challenges," Hassan concludes. But such investments in science and technology could be a key to the region's future."

Walter Derzko

When will the recession end ? Part 47 What's a $billion, or $trillion or two?

The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) is hosting a secret meeting of national central bankers from around the world, in Australia today.  And you won't hear much about it in the media.  While I don't have any insider information, I'll bet that these are some of the numbers that they will be kicking around in closed-door private meetings..or what I call --what's a $billion, $trillion or $quadrillion or two? 

(It's good to have all these numbers and ranges-orders of magnitiude, in perspective)

(..N.B. gleaned from various sources deemed to be reliable. take  Plus (+) or Minus (-) a billion or so)

The REAL BIG Picture

$5 Billion- Goldman Sacs 4Q 2009 earnings

$6.4 Billion - Amount of commerical real estate investments that didn't qualify for refinancing in the first 10 months of 2009 (Business Week Nov 16, 2009)

10 Billion - the number of cells in your body (as a reference point)

$170 billion- Federal funds from TARP  that went to bail out AIG and the top US bank (largely due to derivative losses)

$787 Billion (approx) - TARP bail out 2009

$951 Billion- Cost of the 2 current USA wars (www.costofwar.com)

$ 973 Billion - Size of totoal US credit card debt (2009)

$1 Trillion is a stack of $100 bills 680 MILES high (for reference).

$1 Trillion - Annual global spending on military and wars (US accounts for ½ of that figure)

over $1 Trillion - estimated size of the global underground illegal black market (mafia etc, drugs, booze, laundering money, prostitution, human trafficing etc)

$1.121 Trillion-  German exports (which fell 18.4%) in 2009 .

$1.202 Triilion - China's exports in 2009

$1.7 Trillion - total value of commercial loans on bank's book's

$2.4 Trillion- size of all Global sovereign wealth funds (approx)

$ 3 Trillion - Current proposed U.S. federal budget

$9 Trillion - U. S. government's maximum legal debt for 2009 (up to $14 T in 2010)

$12 Trillion - Amount that U. S. mutual fund companies manage

$12 Trillion - size of US debt

$12 Trillion - Estimated size of "shadow government CAFR accounts in the state of California alone (source www.cafr1.com) The US is not going broke dispite what they want you to believe..!! 

$14 Trillion - quietly earmarked and endorsed by US Congress in 2009 for anticipated bailouts in 2010 or why 2010 will be far worse then 2009 !!

$15 Trillion - U. S. annual gross domestic product (GDP) per year

350 % -total public and private debt to GDP ratio in the USA (2009) 

$15 Trillion - The approximate U. S. money supply

$40 -$110 Trillion - estimated size of shadow "Rainy day" US government accounts that are off the books and off the public balance sheets  (Source: www.cafr1.com)

$45 Trillion- estimated total  global state debt by all governments by 2011 if spending continues at today's pace

90% - world's debt to GDP ratio

$50 Trillion - World's GDPs for all nations (approx)

$50 to $65 Trillion --Unfunded Social Security and Medicare benefits (approx)

$60 Trillion- Estimated size of the Current Default Swaps (CDS) market

$75 Trillion - Total value of the world's real estate (estimated today)

Greater than $100 Trillion - Total value of world's stock and bond markets (today)

$100 Trillion - BIS valuation of world's derivative market back in 2002

$140 Trillion - Derivatives owned by US Banks (that are  registered by BIS -doesn't include private company to company deals)

$517 Trillion - BIS mid 2007 valuation of the world's derivatives market

$681 Trillion - Size of the world derivatives market end of 2007 (BIS)

$1.14 Quadrillion ( or $1,140 Trillion) - Estimated world derivatives market, March 2009 (BIS)

(if you spot any gross errors or have revisions or other interesting $Trillion dollar comparisions, let me know)

Walter Derzko, Smart Economy, Toronto

 Author of the soon-to-be published book- Opportunity 45 Scenarios to Drive Your Business in Challenging Times,  published by J. Wiley and Sons

ISBN13: 978-0-470-73761-3

ISBN10: 0-470-73761-1

Contact us about the Opportunity Clinic workshop and to invite Walter Derzko as a keynote speaker at your next event 

High population density triggers cultural explosions & innovations; Environment not Brains; Nature vs Nurture

Last year, I toured the Royal Ontario Museum exhibit in Toronto– Mysteries of Ancient Ukraine: The Remarkable Trypilian Culture (5400-2700 BC). What was even  more remarkable and mysterious  then the brilliant Trypilian cultural artifacts themselves, was the notion  of uniqueness--why this cultural innovation only existed in a tiny, small geographic area, on what is modern day Ukraine and not the rest of the globe-long before Egypt or Mexico or  Mesapotania?

 

No one seemed to have addressing this question in the exhibit nor is it covered in our modern day high school textbooks.

 

The Union Soviet (..read Russians)  had little to no motivation to promote these archeological discoveries to the rest of the world, which are as exciting as Egypt and which date back over 100 years to the late 1800's,  because of a cultural & political bias and propaganda perspective. Ukraine was considered by Russia's propaganda machine, as a "younger brother" to "mother Russia", and not the older, wiser culture. Seven centuries ago Russia was nothing more then barren,uninhabited swamp land. This is why the West is  only hearing about the Trypilian culture now, after the brakeup /collapse  of the Soviet Union.

 

Trypilion culture even pre-dates Egypt, the pyramids and the Inca's.

 

So I have to ask myself--Were Trypilians smarter then anyone else on the planet  those 7 centuries ago?  Was Tryplia the Silicon Valley of its time? I don't think so. I don't see any cognitive evidence to this affect.

 

Coincidently though , Trypillian culture also designed and built  the first large scale  cities in neolithic Europe, ranging in size up to 20,000 inhabitants. But, just as mysteriously 4.5 centuries ago, they disappeared from the face of the earth without a trace.

 

Researchers from University College London now seem to offer a partial explanation to address my curiosity.....high population density triggers cultural explosions & as well as reversals. So was Ukraine at the cross-roads of many neolithic cultures coming out of Africa and criss-crossing between Asia and Europe? The neolythic silks roads?

 

Increasing population density, rather than boosts in human brain power, appears to have catalyzed the emergence of modern human behaviour, according to a new study by UCL (University College London) scientists published in the journal Science. High population density leads to greater exchange of ideas and skills and prevents the loss of new innovations. It is this skill maintenance, combined with a greater probability of useful innovations, that led to modern human behaviour appearing at different times in different parts of the world. 

 

In the study, the UCL team found that complex skills learnt across generations can only be maintained when there is a critical level of interaction between people. Using computer simulations of social learning, they showed that high and low-skilled groups could coexist over long periods of time and that the degree of skill they maintained depended on local population density or the degree of migration between them. Using genetic estimates of population size in the past, the team went on to show that density was similar in sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and the Middle-East when modern behaviour first appeared in each of these regions. The paper also points to evidence that population density would have dropped for climatic reasons at the time when modern human behaviour temporarily disappeared in sub-Saharan Africa.

Adam Powell, AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity, says: "Our paper proposes a new model for why modern human behaviour started at different times in different regions of the world, why it disappeared in some places before coming back, and why in all cases it occurred more than 100,000 years after modern humans first appeared.

"By modern human behaviour, we mean a radical jump in technological and cultural complexity, which makes our species unique. This includes symbolic behavior, such as abstract and realistic art, and body decoration using threaded shell beads, ochre or tattoo kits; musical instruments; bone, antler and ivory artefacts; stone blades; and more sophisticated hunting and trapping technology, like bows, boomerangs and nets.

Professor Stephen Shennan, UCL Institute of Archaeology, says: "Modern humans have been around for at least 160,000 to 200,000 years but there is no archaeological evidence of any technology beyond basic stone tools until around 90,000 years ago. In Europe and western Asia this advanced technology and behaviour explodes around 45,000 years ago when humans arrive there, but doesn't appear in eastern and southern Asia and Australia until much later, despite a human presence. In sub-Saharan Africa the situation is more complex. Many of the features of modern human behaviour – including the first abstract art – are found some 90,000 years ago but then seem to disappear around 65,000 years ago, before re-emerging some 40,000 years ago.

Dr Mark Thomas, UCL Genetics, Evolution and Environment, says: "When we think of how we came to be the sophisticated creatures we are, we often imagine some sudden critical change, a bit like when the black monolith appears in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. In reality, there is no evidence of a big change in our biological makeup when we started behaving in an intelligent way. Our model can explain this even if our mental capacities are the same today as they were when we first originated as a species some 200,000 years ago.

"Ironically, our finding that successful innovation depends less on how smart you are than how connected you are seems as relevant today as it was 90,000 years ago."

Full story here>>[...]

.....So was it climate change that killed off the Trypilians or did they integrate into another neolithic culture in Europe?

Walter Derzko,

Smart Economy, Toronto

Author of the soon-to-be-released book: Hard Times Golden Opportunities.. about opportunity recognition in a recession/ depression featuring 45 opportunity scenarios.

New Higher Education Business Model? YouTube EDU

In a story called "On the Net: College too expensive? Try YouTube" , AP reports today (April 9, 2009) that:

"More than 100 schools have partnered with YouTube to create the YouTube EDU channel, including MIT, Harvard, Yale, Stanford  and UC Berkley... The Google Inc.-owned YouTube has for the last few years been forging partnerships with universities and colleges. The site recently gathered these video channels under the banner YouTube EDU."

 

What new distribution channels could be incorporated into your evolving business model?

 

Source: The Opportunity Clinic (c) 2009

See http://www.youtube.com/edu

 

Walter Derzko

Smart Economy

Toronto

Author of the soon-to-be-released book: Hard Times Golden Opportunities.. about opportunity recognition in a recession/ depression.

The Opportunity Clinic-28 Tactics for managing your Business in a Recession; Part 15 of 28 Drop problem-solving and adopt opportunity surfing

Why problem-solving, Total Quality Management (TQM), Continuous Improvement (CI), Value Network Analysis (VNA) etc is not good enough in a recession…..you  need to be totally focused on designing and /or finding novel  opportunities. These tools have their place, but it's usually in the upswing part of the business cycle to improve efficiencies of existing operations, but not now.

Many companies are still applying the pre-recession, boom-time mentality to today’s totally changed and novel business environment. Driven by existing business models, mindsets and existing ongoing relationships with  consultants, experts, suppliers and vendors, who are desperately trying to maintain their sales numbers and quotas, companies are continuing to do more of the same…what seemed to worked for them in good  times..lets' work in the same box. What we need is not "out of the box thinking" [I hate that expressionm becuase it shows that you don't understand cognition and how the brain patterns information], but to design brand new "boxes".  

 

The recession is not a problem to be solved, it’s a crisis to be avoided. And you  can only do that in one way. NOW, you need to be totally opportunity-focused and opportunity-receptive and less problem-focused and preoccupied with incremental change. Radical ideas and concepts, (and not accruemental solutions to old problems, unless they lead to novel opportunity spaces) are in order, along with resulting new business models (which we often forget to explore and redesign ), that will help companies thrive and not just survive in a recession.

 

See the cartoon in this week's New Yorker....We're still the same great company we've always been, only we've ceased to exist.  I bet they were great problem-solvers at the tactical, operational level, but poor opportunity surfers at the strategic level.

 

Walter Derzko

Smart Economy,

Toronto;

Author of the soon-to-be-released book: Hard Times Golden Opportunities.. about opportunity recognition in a recession/ depression features 45 opportunity scenarios.