推荐一本不错的学习TI多核DSP的书籍，很全面，共645页。 Multicore DSP From Algorithms to Real-time Implementation on the TMS320C66x SoC 下载地址： http://tadown.com/fs/0lcbj2021c29f165751/
Influence of a tectonically active mountain belt on its foreland basin: Evidence from detrital zircon dating of bedrocks and sediments from the eastern Tibetan Plateau and Sichuan Basin, SW China Ning Zhong (钟宁) , Xiangsuo Song (宋香锁) , Hongyan Xu (徐红艳) , Hanchao Jiang (蒋汉朝) The tectonically active eastern Tibetan Plateau (TP) impacts the populous Sichuan Basin in the form of dust and exhumed detrital materials. To better understand a detailed transport process of detrital material from the eastern TP to the Sichuan Basin, eight samples were collected from the upper reaches of the Min River in the eastern TP to the Sichuan Basin, for zircon U-Pb chronological and grain-size analysis. The results are compared with those of previously studies. Zircon grains are comparatively coarse in three bedrock samples, one fluvial sand sample and one dust sample, but are distinctly fine in three lacustrine samples. Intriguingly, the zircon grain-size parameters from the fluvial sand and dust samples are similar to each other. Consistent with previous studies of this area, the analysis of our U-Pb zircon ages indicates five major age populations at 180-350 Ma, 350-550 Ma, 700-1000 Ma, 1600-2000 Ma, and 2200-2600 Ma, which broadly correspond to five known granitoid magmatic events within the Yangtze Block. The Min River links lacustrine sediments from Lixian, fluvial sands from Wenchuan, Leshan, Yibin, and from the Dadu River and the Dayi conglomerate, implying the Dayi conglomerate was transported by fluvial rather than glacial processes. The denuded detrital material, mainly generated by seismic events in the eastern TP, was transported by water flow into the western Sichuan Basin, where two thick sedimentary depocenters developed, and the relatively fine grains were then transported by wind to thenorthern Sichuan Basin. Thus, the thick sediments in the western Sichuan Basin mainly transported by the Min River probably exerted a major influence on dust deposition in the northern Sichuan Basin. In contrast, the Jialing and Dadu rivers made a minor contribution. JAES2017-Zhong et al..pdf
# send information to the Command Output print hello world # creat a new file and write it f = open('helloworld.txt','w') # creat a txt file in the working directory. w stands for write. when using w, the program will overwite whatever might have been contained in the file. f.write('hello world!!') # write hello world to the txt file. f.close() # close the file. f = open('/Users/Yangyang/Documents/acs_230715.dat','w') # creat a dat file in the given path. f.write('hello world!!') f.close() # read a file f = open('helloworld.txt','r') # open the txt file and read from it. m = f.read() # copy the contents of the above txt file into m. print m # send the information contained in m to the Command Output f.close() f = open ('/Users/Yangyang/Documents/acs_2_230715.dat','r') # open the dat file from a special path and read from it. n = f.read() # copy the contents of the above dat file into n. print n f.close() # append to a pre-existing file f = open('helloworld.txt','a') f.write('\n'+'hello world') # '\n' stands for new line. add 'hello world' in the new line of the txt file. f.close()
A pollen record of the Mid-Pleistocene Transition from Beijing, North China Hanchao Jiang (蒋汉朝), Gaoxuan Guo (郭高轩), Xiangmin Cai (蔡向民), Hongyan Xu (徐红艳), Xiaolin Ma (马小林), Ning Zhong (钟宁), and Yanhao Li (李艳豪) To reconstruct the history of climate and environment in East Asia during the Early Pleistocene, a palynofloral investigation was conducted on fluviolacustrine sediments in Beijing, NorthChina. The results indicate that herb and shrub taxa were dominant in most of the samples, reflecting an open forest grassland covering the Beijing region during much of the Early Pleistocene. This vegetation generally declined during 1.68-1.25 Ma and recovered in part during 1.25-0.96 Ma. From 0.96 Ma, conifers gradually replaced broadleaved trees, shrubs and herbs. After 0.65 Ma, the pollen abundance of conifers and shrubs and herbs all increased significantly. These vegetation changes took place in the context of long term global cooling during the Late Cenozoic. A significant increase in Antarctic ice volume at 1.25-1.2 Ma and the resultant increased meridional temperature gradient in the Southern Ocean led to prominent anomalous warming in the tropics and increased heat/moisture flow across the Equator, probably resulting in vegetation recovery in the study area to some extent during 1.25-0.96 Ma. From 0.96 Ma, the stepwise decline of vegetation cover in the study area especially after 0.65 Ma was driven by further development of global cooling and increase in polar ice volume. JQS2013-Jiang et al.pdf
Provenance and earthquake signature of the last deglacial Xinmocun lacustrine sediments at Diexi, EastTibet Hanchao Jiang (蒋汉朝), Xue Mao (毛雪), Hongyan Xu (徐红艳), Huili Yang (杨会丽), Xiaolin Ma (马小林), Ning Zhong (钟宁), Yanhao Li (李艳豪) Well-preserved lacustrine sediments are found in some areas, in East Tibet. This region is characterized by windy and semi-arid climate, alpine valleys, and frequent earthquakes. Measurements of rare earth elements, observations from a scanning electron microscope and a high-resolution record of grain-size measurements allowed us to compare fine sediments from the Xinmocun section in the Diexi Lake, with loess from the Chinese Loess Plateau and South China. Results indicate that fine grains of the Xinmocun lacustrine sediments were transported by wind and trapped in the lake, whereas the 16 μm fraction was likely from local sources. The grain-size changes within the section repeatedly show abrupt coarsening and upward fining, probably due to palaeoearthquake events. Large earthquakes in the study area often caused rockfalls and landslides, exposing fine sediments that had accumulated on mountains’ slopes. The fine grains were then retransported by wind to the Diexi Lake. Optically stimulated luminescence dating of the Xinmocun section indicates continuous deposition from 18.65 to 10.63 ka. These results indicate that palaeoearthquakes in the study area had a mean recurrence interval of ~0.32 ka . Therefore, we propose that lacustrine sediments in a tectonically active region have the potential to record a continuous history of palaeoearthquakes. Palaeoearthquakes probably produced numerous rockfalls and landslides in alpine valleys and provided significant sources of regional eolian dust. GM2014-Jiang et al.pdf
~4 Ma coarsening of sediments from Baikal, Chinese Loess Plateau and South China Sea and implications for the onset of NH glaciation Hanchao Jiang (蒋汉朝), Xue Mao (毛雪), Hongyan Xu (徐红艳), Jessica Thompson, Xiaolin Ma (马小林) Intense tectonic movement occurred along the northeastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau 3-4 Ma. During the same time period, global climate changed from a period of stability to a period of frequent and abrupt changes, which prevented fluvial and glacial systems from establishing a state of equilibrium. Thus, it is difficult to directly attribute the 3-4 Ma coarse-grained sediment accumulation in East Asia to climate change or tectonic activity. This study compares Late Cenozoic multi-proxy records from the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) to the low-latitude grain-size, sea level and benthic δ 18 O records from the South China Sea (SCS) and the high latitude grain-size record from Lake Baikal. All records suggest a steady and persistent cooling since ~4 Ma, which correlates well with those cooling records from other regions around the world. This coincided in timing with the modeling results that the closure of the Central American Seaway (CAS) initiated strengthening of Atlantic meridional overturning circulation between 4.8 and 4.0 Ma which led to both warming of the Northern Hemisphere (NH) and cooling of the Southern Hemisphere (SH). Cooling of the SH would induce a marked development of the Antarctic ice sheets at ~4 Ma, pushing the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) northward. This was superimposed on warming of the NH and brought more precipitation to the middle latitudes of the NH, resulting in increases in coarse-grained sediments in the Sikouzi section from the western CLP since 4.2 Ma. Notably, absence of coarse-grained sedimentation in the Sikouzi section during 3.0-2.1 Ma and the gradual decrease in coarse-grained peaks since 2.1 Ma reflected by the Sikouzi grain-size record probably resulted from stepwise increase in the NH ice volume pushing the ITCZ southward. On the other hand, development of the Antarctic ice sheets would induce global cooling and enhancement of physical weathering, initiating increases in sedimentation rates as well as increases in grain size from Lake Baikal to the CLP to the SCS. Therefore the closure of the CAS during 4.8-4.0 Ma and its influence on ocean heat transport was possibly the major forcing factor for global cooling since 4 Ma. A persistent and steady cooling during 4-3 Ma probably made a significant contribution to the establishment of the NH ice sheets at 2.75 Ma ago. Palaeo2010-Jiang et al.pdf
God and Physics: From Hawking to Avicenna William E. Carroll The first religious obligation of every intelligent boy who comes of age, as marked by years or by the dreams of puberty, is to form the intention of reasoning as soundly as he can to an awareness that the world is originated. Abū ‘l-Ma’āli al-Juwaynī (1028-1085) 1 Al-Juwaynī thought that an awareness of the originatedness of the world necessarily meant a rejection of any claim to its being eternal and led, consequently, to the affirmation that it was created by God. He argues that it is reasonable to hold that the world is temporally finite -- this is what it means to be originated -- and that, on the basis of such an observation, one can come to know that there is a Creator. Furthermore, knowledge of creation is knowledge of divine sovereignty, which leads one to submit religiously to God’s plan. Discussions about the relationship between physics and theology — between our knowledge of the world of nature and our knowledge of God — are one of the enduring features of Western culture. Although my remarks will have as their focus developments in the Christian Latin West, we need to remember that in the natural sciences and in philosophy the Latin West was heavily influenced by the work of Muslim and Jewish thinkers. In some of my comments today and in my next lecture I hope to show the nature and extent of that influence. The twin pillars of every civilization are religion and science. Contemporary cosmological theories, especially discourse about the origins of the universe, reveal the continuing encounter between physics and theology. It is a discourse which interests thinkers of our own age as much as it did those in the Middle Ages. I should like to sketch some of the current discussion in order to suggest how the contemporary world can learn a great deal from mediaeval analyses of the relationship among physics, metaphysics, and theology. In fact, to go from Stephen Hawking to Avicenna is, in an important sense, to go from confusion to clarity. Recent studies in particle physics and astronomy have produced dazzling speculations about the early history of the universe. Cosmologists now routinely entertain elaborate scenarios which propose to describe what the universe was like when it was the size of a softball, a mere 10 -35 second after the Big Bang. The description of the emergence of four fundamental forces and twelve discrete subatomic particles is almost a common-place in modern physics. There is little doubt among scientists that we live in the aftermath of a giant explosion which occurred around 15 billion years ago -- give or take a few billion. John Gribbin, an astrophysicist at Cambridge University, summarizes the importance of Big Bang cosmology in this way: “ the discovery of the century, in cosmology at least, was without doubt the dramatic discovery made by Hubble, and confirmed by Einstein’s equations, that the Universe is not eternal, static, and unchanging.” 2 In 1988, Hawking observed that as a result of Big Bang cosmology the question of the beginning of the universe entered “the realm of science.” 3 More recently he has argued that we can have no scientific theory of nature unless the theory accounts for the beginning of the universe. The only way to have a scientific theory is if the laws of physics hold everywhere, including at the beginning of the universe. One can regard this as a triumph of the principles of democracy: why should the beginning of the universe be exempt from the laws that apply to other points? If all points are equal, one can’t allow some to be more equal than others. 4 This confidence that cosmology now can address the beginning of the universe -- a confidence shared by many cosmologists -- has led to all sorts of speculations about the initial state of the universe. For many scientists, philosophers, and theologians such speculations in cosmology speak directly to long-established beliefs about creation. 5 Most physicists refer to the Big Bang as a “singularity,” that is, an ultimate boundary or edge, a “state of infinite density” where spacetime has ceased. Thus it represents an outer limit of what we can know about the universe. If all physical theories are formulated in the context of space and time, it would not be possible to speculate, at least in the natural sciences, about conditions before or beyond these categories. Nevertheless, during the last twenty years, precisely such speculation has intrigued several cosmologists. 6 Some of them now offer theories which propose to account for the Big Bang itself as a fluctuation of a primal vacuum. Just as sub-atomic particles are thought to emerge spontaneously in vacuums in laboratories, so the whole universe may be the result of a similar process. 7 Professor Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University has developed a variation of an inflationary model of the expanding universe which accounts for the birth of the universe “by quantum tunneling from nothing.” “Nothing,” for Vilenkin, is a “state with no classical space-time . . . the realm of unrestrained quantum gravity; it is a rather bizarre state in which all our basic notions of space, time, energy, entropy, etc., lose their meaning.” 8 For those cosmologists unwilling to accept an unexplained Big Bang, or an explanation which seemed to them to require a supernatural agent, the variation of the Big Bang theory proposed by Vilenkin and Guth was welcome. Are we on the verge of a scientific explanation of the very origin of the universe? The contention of several proponents of the new theories is that the laws of physics are themselves sufficient to account for the origin and existence of the universe. If this be true, then, in a sense, we live in a universe which needs no explanation beyond itself, a universe which has sprung into existence spontaneously from a cosmic nothingness. Heinz Pagels, writing a few years ago, claimed that “When historians of science look back on the 1970s and 1980s they will report that for the first time scientists constructed rational mathematical models based on the laws of physics which described the creation of the universe out of nothing. And that will mark the beginning of a new outlook on the creation of existence.” Pagels is confident that “from microcosm to macrocosm, from its origin to its end, the universe is described by physical laws comprehensible to the human mind.” 9 Paul Davies, who has written extensively on physics, cosmology, and their philosophical and theological implications, thinks that the theory of an inflationary universe accounts for the emergence “out of nothingness” of both fundamental particles and spacetime itself “as the result of a causeless quantum transition.” In this remarkable scenario, the entire universe simply comes out of nowhere, completely in accordance with the laws of physics, and creates along the way all the matter and energy needed to build the universe as we now see it. 10 Although recently Davies has become less enthusiastic about the promises of the new physics, a decade ago he wrote the following: For the first time, a unified description of all creation could be within our grasp. No scientific problem is more fundamental or more daunting than the puzzle of how the universe came into being. Could this have happened without any supernatural input? Quantum physics seems to provide a loophole to the age-old assumption that ‘you can’t get something from nothing.’ Physicists are now talking about the ‘self-creating universe’: a cosmos that erupts into existence spontaneously, much as a subnuclear particle sometimes pops out of nowhere in certain high energy processes. The question of whether the details of this theory are right or wrong is not so very important. What matters is that it is now possible to conceive of a scientific explanation for all of creation. Has modern physics abolished God altogether. . .? 11 In an even more radical vein, the philosopher Quentin Smith writes that “there is sufficient evidence to warrant the conclusion that the universe . . . began to exist without being caused to do so.” 12 The title of his essay is “The Uncaused Beginning of the Universe,” and his conclusion is revealing: “. . . the fact of the matter is that the most reasonable belief is that we came from nothing, by nothing and for nothing.” 13 Elsewhere Smith writes that if Big Bang cosmology is true “our universe exists without cause or without explanation. . . . exists non necessarily, improbably, and causelessly. It exists for absolutely no reason at all. ” 14 There is another major trend in the application of quantum mechanics to cosmology -- different from the inflationary universe and the quantum tunneling from nothing described by Vilenkin -- but no less significant in the claims it makes, or are made for it, concerning the answers to ultimate questions about the universe. This is the view made famous by Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time (1988). Hawking argues that quantum mechanics shows us that the classical picture of a “well-defined spacetime arises as a limiting case of the quantum perspective.” 15 Time is less fundamental than space and, as a consequence, spacetime cannot have a singular, initial boundary. There is no singularity, no initial boundary at all; the universe has no beginning! Even though unbounded, the universe is finite. Here is how Hawking sets forth his view: The quantum theory of gravity has opened up a new possibility, in which there would be no boundary to space-time and so there would be no need to specify the behavior at the boundary. One could say: ‘The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary.’ The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE. 16 The appeal to an initial singularity is, for Hawking, an admission of defeat: “If the laws of physics could break down at the beginning of the universe, why couldn’t they break down anywhere?” 17 To admit a singularity is to deny a universal predictability to physics, and, hence ultimately, to reject the competency of science to understand the universe. Hawking is not shy about drawing a theological conclusion from his cosmological speculations. If the universe had no beginning, there is nothing whatsoever for God to do -- except to choose the laws of physics. Physics, were it to discover a unified theory, will allow us to know “the mind of God.” Here again are Hawking’s words: So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator? 18 Carl Sagan, in his introduction to A Brief History of Time , argues that Hawking’s cosmology shows us “a universe with no edge in space, no beginning or end in time, and nothing for a Creator to do.” 19 One of the more prolific writers on current cosmology is John Barrow, professor of astronomy at the University of Sussex. In The Origins of the Universe (1994), Barrow observes that the no-boundary condition of Hawking’s quantum cosmology has become increasingly attractive because it “avoids the necessity for . . . a cataclysmic beginning.” Barrow thinks that the traditional Big Bang picture, with its initial singularity of infinite density “is, strictly speaking, . . . creation out of absolutely nothing.” 20 It is interesting that some Christians rushed to embrace Big Bang cosmology because they saw it as scientific confirmation of the Genesis story of creation. 21 Accordingly, we may understand the particular attraction of some to current variations in Big Bang cosmology which purport either to account for the initial singularity in terms of quantum tunneling or to deny the existence of an initial boundary to the universe. In either case, so it might seem, the role of a creator is superfluous. 22 I think that an examination of the discussion of physics and theology in the Middle Ages, especially the development by Thomas Aquinas of the doctrine of creation out of nothing, will enable us to see that to use Big Bang cosmology either to affirm creation or to deny it is an example of misunderstandings of both cosmology and creation. The universe described by Sagan, Hawking, and others -- the fruit so it seems of contemporary cosmology -- is a self-contained universe, exhaustively understood in terms of the laws of physics. In such a universe there would seem to be little if any need for the God of Jewish, Christian, or Muslim revelation. The traditional doctrine of creation seems obsolete in the face of the recent advances of modern science. For some the notion of a Creator represents an intellectual artifact from a less enlightened age. Too often contemporary discussions about the theological and philosophical implications of Big Bang cosmology, as that cosmology has been refined, suffer from an ignorance of the history of science, and, with respect to the theories which claim to involve the origin of the universe, these recent discussions reveal an ignorance of the sophisticated analyses of the natural sciences and of creation which took place in the Middle Ages. The reception of Aristotelian science in Muslim, Jewish, and Christian intellectual circles in the Middle Ages provided the occasion for a wide-ranging discussion of the relationship between theology and the natural sciences. 23 There is no better way, I think, to begin to understand this discussion than to focus on the development of the doctrine of creation. This will serve as the unifying theme of my reflections in several of my lectures. In fact, I will claim that Aquinas’ understanding of creation — and, in particular, the distinctions he draws among theology, metaphysics, and natural philosophy — can continue to serve as an anchor of intelligibility in a contemporary sea of speculative theories. The story of the reception of Greek science, and in particular of the texts of Aristotle, in the Latin West is readily available and I do not want to retell it here. The footnotes to this lecture provide references to these texts. I do wish, however, to make a few brief comments on the reception of Greek learning. The development of cathedral schools in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a part of the reform program championed by the papacy, brought renewed interest in the heritage of classical antiquity. 24 At Chartres, for example, there was extensive study of Plato’s cosmological work, the Timaeus , along with Chalcidius’ commentary, as well as of Martianus Capella’s Marriage of Philology and Mercury , Macrobius’ Dream of Scipio , Seneca’s Natural Questions , Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods , along with works by Augustine, Boethius, and John Scotus Eriugena. The Timaeus was particularly important in that it contained the most systematic discussion of questions in cosmology and physics. Thierry of Chartres (d. after 1156) was especially influential in his attempt to use Platonic cosmology in his reading of the creation account in Genesis. 25 “The revival of learning began as an attempt to master and exploit traditional Latin sources. However, before the end of the twelfth century it was transformed by the infusion of new books, containing new ideas, freshly translated from Greek and Arabic originals. This new material, first a trickle and eventually a flood, radically altered the intellectual life of the West.” 26 The Christian reconquest of Toledo in Spain in 1085 and the Norman conquest of southern Italy and Sicily in the late eleventh century provided the opportunity for the translation of a significant number of texts from Arabic and Greek into Latin. In the twelfth century, under the sponsorship of the Archbishop of Toledo, a team of scholars led by Dominic Gundissalinus translated works by Avicenna, al-Farabi, and al-Kindi. Gerard of Cremona (ca. 1114-87) learned Arabic and translated most of the Aristotelian works in the natural sciences. Gerard translated seventy-one works from the Arabic. As James Weisheipl has observed, Gerard deserves recognition as the “midwife of Western science.” 27 In the thirteenth century Robert Grosseteste 28 and William of Moerbeke 29 labored tirelessly to produce even better translations of Greek texts. Between 1200 and 1209, Grosseteste, the renowned Oxford master, produced the first full exposition of the Posterior Analytics , a text which John of Salisbury in the previous century described as having as many barriers to understanding as there were chapters. By 1220 Averroes’ commentary on this text appeared in Latin. It is difficult to underestimate the importance of the Posterior Analytics in Western intellectual history since it represents Aristotle’s systematic exposition of his understanding of the nature of science and the role of demonstration in acquiring knowledge of nature. By late 1260s both Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas had completed extensive commentaries on this work. The curriculum of the newly established universities, especially at Oxford and Paris, would eventually be revolutionized by the influx of the new learning. Although there is some evidence that there were lectures on Aristotle’s “logica nova” in the first decade of the thirteenth century at both universities, there is little evidence of significant influence until the 1240s and 1250s. In 1210, in 1215, and again in 1231 Aristotle’s works “concerning natural philosophy” were formally banned from the curriculum at Paris, but this early hostile reaction eventually dissipated so that by the middle of the century Aristotelian texts were taught openly. The reaction to a radical form of Aristotelianism which resulted in formal condemnations by the Bishop of Paris in 1270 and 1277 will be the subject of a future lecture, so I will set aside for now any detailed account of the reception of Aristotle in the thirteenth century. The controversies in the Latin West were in important ways anticipated in the Islamic world, and I want to devote the remainder of my remarks to mediaeval Islamic culture since Aquinas’ development of his understanding of creation depends heavily upon the work of medieval Muslim thinkers. Furthermore, as I have already indicated, there is no more important area of encounter among the natural sciences, theology, and metaphysics than the topic of creation. The reception of Greek philosophy in the Islamic world is a complex story. 30 Well before the rise of Islam, Nestorian Christians in Syria and Persia established centers of learning producing translations of Greek texts into different Near Eastern languages (especially Syriac and later Arabic). By the middle of the eighth century the ‘Abassid caliphs had built the new capital city of Baghdad 31 and under their influence the Hellenization of the Islamic world accelerated. The caliph al-Ma’m_n (813-833) founded a research institute, the House of Wisdom, in Baghdad, which served as the center for translations. 32 The primary interest was in medical texts, but a few Platonic dialogues, including the Timaeus , Euclid’s Elements , and Ptolemy’s Almagest were translated. By the year 1000 A.D. “almost the entire corpus of Greek medicine, natural philosophy, and mathematical science had been rendered into usable Arabic versions.” 33 The role of Greek science in Islamic culture continues to be the subject of scholarly controversy: that is, whether it existed only on the margins of Islamic culture or whether it was appropriated into that culture and served an important role in the development of law and theology. It does seem clear, however, that the claim that science in Islam remained simply a matter of being faithful to Greek thinking and, hence, “was destitute of all originality,” is false. 34 Whatever their role of disciples might involve, Muslim scientists made important contributions to medicine, astronomy, optics, and mathematics. 35 As we remember that the focus of my comments concerns, if not “the dreams of puberty,” at least that “religious obligation . . . to form the intention of reasoning as soundly as . . . can to an awareness that the world is originated,” let us turn our attention to theology and the natural sciences in the Islamic setting. As early as 932 there was a famous public debate in Baghdad over the merits of the “new learning.” 36 Greek philosophy seemed particularly challenging to many Muslim theologians ( mutakallimun ) who came to view it with suspicion as an alien way of thinking. Divine sovereignty and the radical contingency of the created order must be protected from the encroachments of Greek logic and an Aristotelian science which sought to discover the necessary nexus between cause and effect. Any necessity posited in the created order seemed to threaten divine omnipotence and, accordingly, many theologians embraced a radical occasionalism which saw events in the world as only the occasions for divine action. God alone is the true cause of all that happens. The position which these Muslim theologians feared can be found in the work of al-Farabi (870-950), who established in Cairo a curriculum for the study of Plato and Aristotle, and of Avicenna (980-1037), whose writings in medicine, natural philosophy, and metaphysics proved to be extraordinarily influential. Their work offers an excellent example of the way in which Greek thought could be appropriated in the Islamic world. 37 Also, Avicenna, translated into Latin, will prove to be especially important for Thomas Aquinas, as we shall see. Avicenna’s understanding of the relationship between God, the absolutely necessary being, and the created order of things which are, in themselves, only possible will contribute to Aquinas’ understanding of creation. In his monumental al-Shifa’: al-Ilahiyyat , Avicenna writes: “This is what it means that a thing is created, that is, receiving its existence from another . . . . As a result everything, in relation to the first cause, is created. . . . Therefore, every single thing, except the primal One, exists after not having existed with respect to itself.” 38 In explaining the kind of agent (or efficient) causality which creation involves, Avicenna notes that there is an important difference between the ways in which metaphysicians and natural philosophers discuss agent cause: . . . the metaphysicians do not intend by the agent the principle of movement only, as do the natural philosophers, but also the principle of existence and that which bestows existence, such as the creator of the world. 39 The recognition that creation is properly a subject of metaphysics and not of physics (i.e., of natural philosophy) will be particularly important for Aquinas, as will Avicenna’s insistence on the distinction between essence and existence. With respect to the latter topic, Avicenna observes that a reflection on what it means for something to be reveals that what something is -- i.e., its essence -- is different from whether a thing exists. On the basis of the ontological distinction between essence and existence, Avicenna argues that all beings other than God (in whom this distinction disappears) require a cause in order to exist. 40 Avicenna’s distinction between existence and essence is part of his contribution to a long standing intellectual project which sought to understand the relationship between existing individuals and their “intelligible natures.” Those schooled in the Neoplatonic tradition gave ontological priority to the intelligible nature; hence, the attraction of an emanationist scheme according to which all existing things flow from a primal source of being and intelligibility. The immediate context of Avicenna’s distinction between existence and essence is his discussion of necessary and possible being. Aquinas follows Avicenna’s lead but comes to recognize a rather different sort of creaturely contingence from that of Avicenna. For Avicenna, essence is something prior and to which existence “happens” or comes as an accident. 41 According to Avicenna, “real existence” emerges as a new attribute for the contingent being of the created world (which was originally present as an essence or “possibility” in the divine mind); it is “a kind of added benefit bestowed by God upon possible being in the act of creation.” 42 As David Burrell observes, Aquinas will use Avicenna’s distinction between essence and existence but develop the notion of radical dependency in such a way that creaturely existence is understood not as something which happens to essence but as a fundamental relation to the Creator as origin. 43 But I will examine the distinctive contribution of Aquinas on this topic in the next two lectures. An eternal world was often viewed as a necessary world, a world which, accordingly, was not the result of the free creative act of God. Avicenna sought to be faithful to Greek metaphysics (especially in the Neoplatonic tradition) and also to affirm the contingency of the created order. 44 Although the world proceeds from God by necessity and is eternal, it differs fundamentally from God in that in itself it is only possible and requires a cause in order to exist. God, on the other hand, is necessary in Himself and, thus, requires no cause. A key to science, in the sense set forth by Aristotle in his Posterior Analytics , is the knowledge of a necessary nexus between cause and effect; only such necessary knowledge truly deserves the name science ( episteme ). Contingent existence, although not necessary in itself ( per se ), is necessary through/by another. 45 Avicenna thought that the contingency of the world he described did not deny natural necessity. 46 Finite creatures are contingent in themselves but necessary with reference to their causes, and ultimately with reference to God. A world without necessary relationships is an unintelligible world. Yet, at the same time, the fear was that a necessary world is a self-sufficient world, a world which cannot not be: the opposite, so it seemed of a world created by God. At best a necessary world would only be a world which must surge forth from a primal source of being. The explanation of the absolute origin of the world in terms of a necessary emanationist schema was attractive since it seems to do justice to both necessity and dependence. Necessity is demanded by Greek science in order to protect the intelligibility of the world; dependence is demanded by theology to protect the ‘originatedness’ of the world. Creation for Avicenna is an ontological relationship -- a relationship in the order of being -- with no reference to temporality. In fact, Avicenna accepted the established Greek view that the universe is eternal. Obviously, his view of the emanation of existing things from a primal source -- a view which excluded the free act of God -- only made sense in an eternal universe. But, does an emanationist metaphysics do justice to creation? Is it consistent with the God revealed in the Koran or the Bible? It was precisely such questions which led al-Ghazali (1058-1111), a jurist, theologian, and mystic, to argue against what he considered to be threats to Islam in the thought of philosophers such as Avicenna. In The Incoherence of the Philosophers al-Ghazali sets forth a wide-ranging critique of Greek thought: In the three questions. . . they were opposed to of all Muslims, viz. in their affirming (1) that men’s bodies will not be assembled on the Last Day, but only disembodied spirits will be rewarded and punished, and the rewards and punishments will be spiritual, not corporeal . . . they falsely denied the corporeal rewards and punishments and blasphemed the revealed Law in their stated views. (2) The second question is their declaration: ‘God Most High knows universals, but not particulars.’ This also is out-and-out unbelief. . . (3) The third question is their maintaining the eternity of the world, past and future. No Muslim has ever professed any of their views on these questions. 47 He defends what he considers to be the orthodox Islamic doctrine of creation versus Avicenna’s embrace of an eternal world. Such a world, al-Ghazali thought, was the very antithesis of a created one. An eternal world cannot be dependent upon an act of God, since an eternal world would be a completely self-sufficient world. 48 In fact, al-Ghazali claims that, even on philosophical grounds, all the arguments advanced for an eternal world fail. It is perhaps ironic that Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan would agree with al-Ghazali in claiming that a universe that has an absolute temporal beginning is what is necessarily meant by a created universe. They, of course, think that by denying such a singularity they have left nothing for a creator to do. Avicenna, as we have seen, argued that creation is a metaphysical dependence — an explanation of the cause of existence of things — and as such creation is not a subject of reflection in the natural sciences. I will pursue this theme in my next lecture, showing that Thomas Aquinas offers an excellent antidote to confusing discussions in our own age about God, physics, and the origin of the world. The incoherence which al-Ghazali found in Avicenna’s position was the affirmation of a world which is simultaneously eternal and created. It would seem to many Muslim theologians that one had to choose between Athens and Mecca, between Greek science and the revelation of the Koran. To seek to embrace both is, so they thought, to be incoherent. In the next lecture we will examine this claim of incoherence as it is rejected by Averroes, Maimonides, and Aquinas. Aquinas will defend the possibility of an eternal world created ex nihilo by God. Aquinas’ understanding of creation, forged in the midst of the mediaeval controversy about the relationship between Greek science and divine revelation, remains one of the towering achievements of human history. I leave you with a sentence from the young Aquinas, written in the 1250s at the University of Paris: “Not only does faith hold that there is creation but reason also demonstrates it.” It is a claim which we shall explore at our next session. EndNotes 1 From his Kitab al-Irshad ( Book of Right Guidance ); quoted in L. E. Goodman, Avicenna (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 49. An Ash’arite theologian, he taught al-Ghazali at Nishapur. 2 John Gribbin, In the Beginning: The Birth of the Living Universe (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993), p. 19. 3 Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), p. 8. 4 Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 71. 5 The literature on this subject is enormous. Among many authors who offer a survey of these recent variations in Big Bang cosmology and comment on their philosophical and theological implications see: William E. Carroll, “Big Bang Cosmology, Quantum Tunneling from Nothing, and Creation,” Laval théologique et philosophique , 44, no.1 (février 1988), pp. 59-75; Mariano Artigas, “ Física y creación: el origen del universo,” Scripta Theologica , 29, nos. 1 and 2 (1987), pp. 347-373; E. McMullin, “Natural Science and Belief in a Creator: Historical Notes,” W. R. Stoeger, “Contemporary Cosmology and Its Implications for the Science-Religion Dialogue,” T. Peters, “On Creating the Cosmos,” J. Polkinghorne, “The Quantum World,” R. J. Russell, “Quantum Physics in Philosophical and Theological Perspective,” and C. J. Isham, “Creation of the Universe as a Quantum Process,” in Physics, Philosophy, and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding , edited by Robert John Russell, William R. Stoeger, S.J., and George V. Coyne, S.J. (Vatican City: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1988), pp. 49-79, 219- 247, 273-296, 333-342, 343-374, 375-408; William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith, Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); C.J. Isham, “Quantum Theories of the Creation of the Universe” and Robert John Russell, “Finite Creation Without a Beginning: The Doctrine of Creation in Relation to Big Bang and Quantum Cosmologies,” in Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature , edited by Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and C.J. Isham (Vatican City: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1993), pp.49- 89, 293-329; Ernan McMullin, “Indifference Principle and Anthropic Principle in Cosmology,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science , 24, no. 3 (1993), pp. 359-389; Juan José Sanguineti, El Origen del Universo: La cosmología en busca de la filosofía (Buenos Aires: Editorial de la Universidad Catolica Argentina, 1994) and “La creazione nella cosmologia contemporanea,” Acta Philosophica 4, no. 2 (1995), pp. 285-313; Joseph Zycinski, “Metaphysics and Epistemology in Stephen Hawking’s Theory of the Creation of the Universe,” Zygon , vol. 31, no. 2 (June 1996), pp. 269-284. 6 As a historian of science I am not competent to judge the specific scientific claims in these various speculations. I do wish to examine the philosophical and theological claims so frequently associated with these speculations and to show how the history of mediaeval philosophy, theology, and science is especially useful in such an examination. 7 One of the early proponents of this view was Edward Tryon of the City University of New York. He argued that the Big Bang could be understood as “quantum tunneling from nothing.” Nature 246, no. 14 (14 December 1973), p. 396. 8 “Birth of Inflationary Universes,” in Physical Review D , 27:12 (1983), p. 2851. Other essays by Vilenkin: “Quantum Cosmology and the Initial State of the Universe, “ in Physical Review D 37 (1988), pp. 888-897, and “Approaches to Quantum Cosmology,” in Physical Review D 50 (1994), pp. 2581-2594. 9 Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time (London: Michael Joseph, Ltd., 1985), pp. 349 and 17. 10 God and the New Physics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), p. 215. When Davies speaks of a “causeless quantum transition,” he is using the term “cause” to refer to a temporal succession of predictable events. There is a great deal of confusion in the philosophical interpretation of quantum mechanics, especially with respect to the meaning of Heisenberg’s “relation of uncertainty.” It is one thing to affirm that we are not able to provide a precise mathematical measure of both the velocity and the position of a sub-atomic particle; it is quite another to deny the objective reality of the particle or to contend that there is a realm of “causeless” effects. We might not be able to predict certain events. This does mean that these events have no cause. 11 ibid. , p. viii. 12 William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith, op. cit ., p. 109. 13 ibid ., p. 135. A particularly good example of the persisting confusion about the roles of science, metaphysics, and theology in understanding the universe and its origins is an essay by P.W. Atkins, distinguished physical chemist at Oxford University. Convinced that all human knowledge is reducible to the explanatory categories of the natural sciences, Atkins thinks that the domain of scientific discourse is truly limitless. Accordingly, he says that it is the task of science “to account for the emergence of everything from absolutely nothing. Not almost nothing, not a subatomic dust-like speck, but absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. Not even empty space.” P. W. Atkins, “The Limitless Power of Science,” in Nature’s Imagination: The Frontiers of Scientific Vision , edited by John Cornwell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 131. For a criticism of this essay, see William E. Carroll, “Reductionism and the Conflict Between Science and Religion,” The Allen Review 15 (Oxford, 1996), pp. 19-22. 14 ibid. , p. 217. Italics are in the original. 15 For a very good account of Hawking’s analysis, actually the Hartle/Hawking analysis, see Robert John Russell, “ Finite Creation Without a Beginning . . .,” in Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature , op. cit., pp. 293-329. J. Hartle, S. Hawking, “Wave Function of the Universe,” in Physical Review D, 28 (1983), pp. 2960-2975; S. Hawking, “The Boundary Condition of the Universe,” in Astrophysical Cosmology , edited by H.A. Brück, G.V. Coyne, M.S. Longair (Vatican City: Pontifical Academy of Science, 1982), pp. 563-572; S. Hawking, “The Quantum State of the Universe,” in Nuclear Physics B 239 (1984), pp. 257-276. See also, Keith Ward’s discussion, “Creation and Modern Cosmology,” in Religion and Creation (Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 287-315. 16 Hawking, A Brief History of Time , op. cit., p. 136. The two “most remarkable features that I have learned in my research on space and time : 1) that gravity curls up spacetime so that it has a beginning and an end; 2) that there is a deep connection between gravity and thermodynamics that arise because gravity itself determines the topology of the manifold on which it acts.” Hawking in Hawking and Penrose (1996), op. cit ., p. 103. 17 ibid. , p. 76. 18 ibid. , p. 141. C.J. Isham thinks that the Hartle/Hawking model is philosophically superior to the standard Big Bang model with an initial singularity. “ hese theories are prone to predict, not a single creation/seed-point, but rather an infinite number of them. . . .” “There is simply no way of distinguishing any particular instant of time” at which the universe would spontaneously appear. Whereas for Aquinas reason alone is unable to decide whether or not the universe has an absolute temporal beginning; or better, since he believes that there is such a beginning, it is hidden from the view of human reason, in the Hartle/Hawking model an absolute beginning simply does not exist. Willem Drees agrees with Isham and thinks that, since theology is not really wedded to historical origination but only ontological orgination, the Hartle/Hawking model is more compatible with the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Beyond the Big Bang: Quantum Cosmologies and God (LaSalle, IL: Open Court: 1990), especially pp. 70-71. 19 ibid. , p. x. 20 John Barrow, The Origin of the Universe (New York: Basic Books, 1994), p. 113. 21 In fact, in the 1950s and 1960s Soviet cosmologists were forbidden to teach the theory since it was considered to be theistic science. 22 For a discussion of these reactions, see Carroll, “Big Bang Cosmology, Quantum Tunneling from Nothing, and Creation,” op. cit. , pp. 64-67. 23 See Herbert A. Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). 24 In the Latin Middle Ages almost all of the works of Aristotle were translated into Latin, either from the Arabic or the Greek, and eventually were the subject of study. The exceptions were the Eudemian Ethics , which was never translated, and the Poetics , which although translated by William of Moerbeke, remained virtually unknown. Most of the works of Aristotle were translated from the Greek; our knowledge of them comes from a corpus of 2000 manuscripts (dating from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries) in various European libraries. Some of the works were mistakenly attributed to Aristotle. Our knowledge of these translations owes its origin to the initial work of Amable Jourdain who in 1819 published Recherches critiques sur l’ge et l’origine des traductions latines d’Aristote. By the middle of the present century the catalogue of these manuscripts appeared and now there is an extensive collection, in the series Aristoteles latinus , of critical editions of these translations. See Charles H. Lohr, “Aristotele latinus,” in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy , edited by Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg (Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 45-46. Lohr provides a useful table of all the translations, pp. 74-79. Many of these works were translated more than once. Already in the sixth century Boethius had begun his project of translating all of Plato and Aristotle into Latin, but the only works of Aristotle which we have evidence that he translated are the Categories, De interpretatione , Prior Analytics , Topics , and Sophistici elenchi : that is, all of what has been called Aristotle’s “Organon” with the exception of the Posterior Analytics. Lohr, op. cit. , p. 53. For more than five hundred years the knowledge of Greek science in the Latin West depended upon Boethius’ translations of Aristotle’s logical treatises, his summary of Euclid’s Elements , his own treatises on arithmetic and music, as well as a partial translation of Plato’s Timaeus and commentaries by Chalcidius and Cicero. Schools established at cathedrals and monasteries, as well as at secular courts, were more concerned with studying grammar, logic, and theology. especially biblical exegesis, than with scientific questions. James A. Weisheipl, OP, The Development of Physical Theory in the Middle Ages (Ann Arbor, MI: Ann Arbor Paperbacks, 1971), pp. 18-19. 25 David Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450 (University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 190-197. William of Conches (d. after 1154) is a good example of the increasing tendency to affirm the importance of the study of nature. In his Philosophy of the World , William attacks those who too readily appeal to direct divine intervention in the world: “Because they are themselves ignorant of nature’s forces and wish to have all men as companions in their ignorance, they are unwilling to investigate them, but prefer that we believe like peasants and not inquire into the causes . However, we say that the cause of everything is to be sought. . . . But these people. . . if they know of anybody so investigating, proclaim him a heretic.” Andrew of St. Victor, discussing the interpretation of biblical events, cautioned that “in expounding Scripture, when the event described admits of no natural explanation, then and then only should we have recourse to miracles.” Quoted in Lindberg, p. 200. 26 Lindberg, op. cit. , p. 203 27 Gerard translated Avicenna’s Canons of Medicine and many works by Galen and Hippocrates. He translated Ptolemy’s Almagest with Arabic commentaries. He translated Euclid’s Elements from the Arabic as well as Aristotle’s Physics , On the Heavens , On Generation and Corruption , and the Posterior Analytics. Weisheipl, op. cit. , p. 21. Gerard had come from northern Italy to Spain in the late 1130s or early 1140s in search of a copy of Ptolemy’s Almagest . He found a copy in Toledo and remained there where he learned Arabic, and found a treasure trove of other texts to translate. Lindberg, op. cit. , pp. 204-5. 28 Grosseteste was first chancellor of Oxford University and bishop of Lincoln from 1235 until his death in 1253. In addition to his role as translator of Aristotle, he was a major political, ecclesiastical, scientific, and philosophical figure in his own right. Charles H. Lohr, “Aristotele latinus,” in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy , edited by Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg (Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 61. Lohr provides a useful table of all the translations, pp. 74-79. 29 Moerbeke, a Dominican and friend of Thomas Aquinas, was born in Belgium around 1215. He traveled extensively in Greece and “was presumably a member of the Dominican convent established at Thebes at least since 1253..” He served in the papal court at Viterbo, and in 1278 he was named Archbishop of Corinth in Greece, where he died in 1286. See Lohr, op. cit. , pp. 62-3. 30 Oliver Leaman, An Introduction to Medieval Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1985); Herbert A. Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Fadlou Shehadi, Metaphysics in Islamic Philosophy (Delmar, N.Y.: Caravan Books, 1982); F.E. Peters, Aristotle and the Arabs : The Aristotelian Tradition in Islam (New York University Press, 1968). 31 In 762, al’Mansur (754-775) built the new capital. The Persian influence was evident in the powerful royal advisors from the Barmak family, formerly from the province of Bactria, and recent converts to Islam. Nestorian Christian physicians also served at the court. See David Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 168. 32 The principal translator was an Arab, Hunayn ibn Ishaq (808-873), who came from a family which had converted to Nestorian Christianity before the advent of Islam. He was fluent in Arabic, Syriac, and Greek. . 33 Lindberg, p. 170. 34 Pierre Duhem, “Physics, History of” in The Catholic Encyclopedia (1911) 11:48. 35 A .I. Sabra provides a very good sketch of these contributions in “Science, Islamic” in Dictionary of the Middle Ages 11:81-88. “Islamic astronomy is a good illustration of the relationship between Islamic and Greek science. Muslim astronomers produced a great deal of very sophisticated astronomical work. The work was carried out largely within the Ptolemaic framework (though we must acknowledge early Hindu influences on Islamic astronomy, largely displaced by subsequent access to Ptolemy’s Almagest and other Greek astronomical works). Muslim astronomers sought to articulate and correct the Ptolemaic system, improve the measurement of Ptolemaic constants, compile planetary tables based on Ptolemaic models, and devise instruments that could be used for the extension and improvement of Ptolemaic astronomy in general.” Lindberg, op. cit. , p. 177. 36 The specific debate concerned whether Aristotelian logic transcended the Greek language and was, thus, appropriate to use by those who spoke and wrote in Arabic. See Shehadi, op. cit. , pp. 23-4. 37 On al-Farabi, see Ian R. Netton, Al-Farabi and His School (London and New York: Routledge, 1992). An excellent survey of Avicenna can be found in the Encyclopedia Iranica (Routledge, 1989), Vol. 3, pp. 66-110. Also L. E. Goodman, Avicenna (Routledge, 1992). 38 al-Shifa’: al-Ilahiyyat , VIII.3, translated in Georges Anawati, La Métaphysique du Shifa’ (Paris, 1978), Vol. II, pp. 83-84. “C’est ce qui veut dire que la chose est créé, i.e., recevant l’existence d’un autre. . . . Par conséquent le tout par rapport à la Cause première est créé. . . . Donc toute chose, sauf l’Un premier, existe après n’avoir par existé eu égard à elle- même .” “When some thing through its own essence is continuously a cause for the existence of some other thing, it is a cause for it continuously as long as its essence continues existing. If it exists continuously, then that which is caused exists continuously. Thus, what is like this is among the highest causes, for it prevents the non- existence of something, and is that which gives perfect existence to something. This is the meaning of that which is called ‘creation’ by the philosophers, namely, the bringing into existence of something after absolute non-existence. For it belongs to that which is caused, in itself, that it does not exist , while it belongs to it from its cause that it does exist . That which belongs to something in itself is prior, according to the mind, in essence, not in time to that which comes from another. Thus, everything which is caused is existing after non-existing by a posteriority in terms of essence. . . . If existence comes after absolute non- existence, its emanation from the cause in this way is called ibda’ (“absolute origination”). This is the most excellent form of the bestowal of existence, for (in this case) non-existence has simply been prevented and existence has been given the sway ab initio .” al-Shifa’: al-Ilahiyyat , II.266, quoted in Barry Kogan, Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation (Binghamton, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985), p. 276, n. 58. See also F. Rahman, “Ibn Sina’s Theory of the God-World Relationship,” in God and Creation , edited by David Burrell and Bernard McGinn (University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), pp. 38-56. 39 al-Shifa’: al-Ilahiyyat , VI. 1, quoted in A. Hyman and J. Walsh (eds.), Philosophy in the Middle Ages , second edition (Hackett, 1983), p. 248. 40 “Il n’y a donc pas d’autre quiddité ( mahiyya ) pour le nécessairement existant que le fait qu’il est nécessairement existant. Et c’est cel l’être ( al-anniya ).” al-Shifa’: al-Ilahiyyat , VIII. 4, tranlsated by Georges Anawati, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 87. The classic work on Avicenna’s analysis of essence and existence is Amelie-Marie Goichon, La distinction de l’essence et l’existence d’après Ibn Sina (Paris, 1937). 41 David Burrell, “Aquinas and Islamic and Jewish Thinkers,” in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas , edited by Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump (Cambidge University Press, 1993), p. 69. Georges Anawati, in his introduction to the Shifa’, puts it this way: “C’est en partant de l’essence qu’Avicenne aboutit forcément à considérer l’ esse qui l’affecte comme un accident. S. Thomas par contre part de l’être existant et il fait de l’ esse ce qu’il y a de plus intime et de plus profond dans cet être.” Georges Anawati, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 78. For an extensive discussion of the “accidentality of existence” in Avicenna, see Shehadi, op. cit. , pp. 93-114. 42 Charles Kahn, “Why Existence Does Not Emerge as a Distinct Concept in Greek Philosophy,” in Philosophies of Existence: Ancient and Medieval , ed. by P. Morewedge (NY: Fordham, 1982), p. 8. “The key to Ibn Sina’s synthesis of the metaphysics of contingency with the metaphysics of necessity lies in the simple phrase: considered in itself . Considered in itself, each effect is radically contingent. It does not contain the conditions of its own existence; and, considered in itself, it need not exist. Its causes give it being. It is by abstracting from its causes that we can regard even the world as a whole as radically contingent. But considered in relation to its causes, not as something that in the abstract might not have existed, but as something concretely given before us, with a determinate character, the same conditionedness that required us to admit its contingency requires us to admit its necessity. Considered in relation to its causes, this object must exist, in the very Aristotelian sense that it does exist, and must have the nature that it has in that its causes gave it that nature. A thing might have been other than as it is, it might yet be other than it is, but it cannot now be other than it is.” Goodman, Avicenna , pp. 66-7. 43 “In one fell swoop, Aquinas has succeeded in restoring the primacy Aristotle intended for individual existing things, by linking them directly to their creator and by granting Avicenna’s ‘distinction’ an unequivocal ontological status. Yet as should be clear, this is more than a development of Avicenna; it is a fresh start requiring a conception of existing that could no longer be confused with an accident , and which has the capacity to link each creature to the gratuitous activity of a free creator. Only in such a way can the radical newness of the created universe find coherent expression, for the existing ‘received from God’ will be the source of all perfections and need not presume anything at all -- be it matter or ‘possibles.’“ David Burrell, “Aquinas and Islamic and Jewish Thinkers,” op. cit ., pp. 69-70. 44 Avicenna, in his philosophic argumentation, “fused the Aristotelian metaphysics of self- sufficiency with the monotheistic metaphysics of contingency. . . .” Goodman, Avicenna , op. cit. , p. 63. 45 See Emil l. Fackenheim, “The Possibility of the Universe in Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Maimonides,” in Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research , Vol. xvi (1947), pp. 39-70; George F. Hourani, “Ibn Sina on Necessary and Possible Existence,” in Philosophical Forum , 4 (1972), pp. 74-86 46 “It was at this juncture between the Aristotelian givenness and the Scriptural gift of being that Ibn Sina created a third major option in metaphysics, subsuming the creationist contingency of the kalam and the essentialist eternalism of Aristotle. Ibn Sina’s cosmos, in contrast with Aristotle’s, was contingent. But, by contrast with the cosmos of the kalam , its contingency did not negate natural necessity, or the efficacy of natural causes and potentialities, including human actions and dispositions. . . . Finite things were contingent in themselves but necessary with reference to their causes and ultimately to God, who is the Cause of causes. Thus the natural order retains its integrity and the continuity of its categories -- time, space, causality, the wholeness of human intelligence, and moral sense.” Goodman, Avicenna, p. 74. 47 al-Ghazali, Munqidh , quoted in L.E. Goodman, An Introduction to Medieval Islamic Philosophy , pp. 20-21. 48 Tahafut al-Falasifah , discussions 1-4. Goodman summarizes al-Ghazali’s central point: “The philosophers wanted to show the world’s timeless dependence upon God, but the idea of timelessness demands that of self-sufficiency, and Ibn Sina’s conception of creation as contingent in itself and necessary with reference to its cause only papers over a contradiction.” Goodman, op. cit. , p. 83.
because there are too many temptations, video clips on the internet (not so easy to watch them in an office with the door wide open), Blogs to read, snacks, drinks, etc. To start, I set a small goal: to finish reviewing a manuscript for a journal. Once I have done that, I am FREE for the rest of the day!
I am not sure Peter Gleick has a page on wikipedia before the incident, but here it is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Gleick#Current_work · 2003 MacArthur Fellow "Genius Award" · 2006 Elected Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences More on Peter Gleick and the Heartland Files By ANDREW C. REVKIN http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/more-on-peter-gleick-and-the-heartland-files/ Peter Gleick Co-founder and President, Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security Report Launch: The World’s Water, Vol. 7 October 18, 2011 // 10:00am — 12:00pm Event Co-sponsors: China Environment Forum http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-worlds-water-volume-7 The China Issue The role of China has been one of the most significant changes over the course of the series, said Gleick. The growth in the Chinese economy has led to a massive growth in demand for water (see the Wilson Center/Circle of Blue project, Choke Point: China ), as well as massive contamination problems. The newest volume addresses these issues as well as China’s dam policies – internally , with neighboring countries , and around the world . Gleick pointed out that China is one of the only nations (maybe the only) that still has a massive dam construction policy, and their installed capacity is already much larger than the United States, Brazil, or Canada. In addition, Chinese companies and financial interests are involved in at least 220 major dam projects in 50 countries around world. These projects have become increasingly controversial , for both environmental and political reasons, he said. “My lens is typically a water lens,” Gleick said, but “none of us can think about the problems we really care about, unless we think about a more integrated approach.” Gleick emphasized the need for new thinking about sustainable, scalable, and socially responsible solutions. “We have to do more than we are doing, in every aspect of water,” he concluded.
I am writing to share my fourth annual letter about the exciting work our foundation and its partners are doing. Over the last 50 years, the percentage of the population living in poverty has fallen from 40 percent to 15 percent, or just about a billion people. That's proof that modest investments in the poorest make a huge difference. However, tough economic times are making it difficult for countries to choose between foreign aid spending and domestic priorities, and many people believe that money spent on aid is wasted. My annual letter this year is an argument for making the choice to keep on helping extremely poor people build self-sufficiency. You can read it at www.gatesfoundation.org/annual-letter/ . Thank you for taking the time to read my letter. Please let me know what you think. I'd also appreciate if you would forward this out through your own social networks. I'm convinced that when people hear stories of the lives they've helped to improve, they want to do more, not less. So the more people we bring into this conversation the better. Sincerely, Bill Gates Co-chair, Bill Melinda Gates Foundation 您好！ 转贴本人1月25日收到的盖茨先生的英文原信，与大家分享。 期望在新的一年里，全球共同发展，共同进步。 （博主胡春松）
..... 有些人适合在家工作，有些人不适合在家工作。 我有个朋友，从国外回来，没有合适的单位，她就在家给人翻译东西，计件，多少钱一千字那种。若论字数算，报酬也不低，但极不稳定，有时很久没有活儿，闲得 无聊，有时又一下扔给你一大堆，忙得腰酸背痛，最后算总账，折合成月薪，还不如去当清洁工。最后，她还是去找了一个稳定的单位，待着。 而我的另外一个朋友，是个画家，给人画插图，画漫画，做设计等等，也是计件，也是极不稳定，也很辛苦，收入也不高。但她喜欢做这些事，就愿意待在家里画，她生活简单，要求不高，做事又认真，慢慢地客户越来越多，收入也就越来越稳定了。 同样是在家工作，为什么一个做得下去，一个做不下去呢？答案就在于一个字爱！对自己所从事的这份工作，你有没有发自内心的爱！在家工作，完完全全是自 己的事，没有人管束，没有人监督，当然，也没有人鼓舞，全靠自己，没有一股发自内心的爱，没有产生于自己内心的真正动力，你是不可能坚持下去的。 ...... You can read the rest at http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_562cb2610100eysd.html?tj=1 A good friend sent me the link, worried about my going full-time freelancing next fall. I am worried, too, because I never thought that I would be anyone but a scientist. On the other hand, I cannot agree with the author's view about freelancing. It's not all about LOVE. There are bills to be paid monthly, among others. To make a basic living is one's bottom line, to be a responsible citizen of a society. I would rather (day) dream with some food in my stomach than not
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/P04.cws_home/main Dear Xu Peiyang, Elsevier congratulates Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki on being awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis. The scientists were honored for discovering more efficient ways of linking carbon atoms together to build the complex molecules that are improving our everyday lives. Palladium catalysts in general have higher chemical yields and higher functional group tolerance. Palladium-catalyzed cross couplings are an investigative chemical tool that has vastly improved the opportunities for chemists to create sophisticated chemicals, directly enhancing product development in pharmaceutical and electronics industries, for example. The Reactions in brief: The Heck coupling is the palladium catalysed carbon-carbon coupling between halides and activated alkenes in the presence of a base. Richard F. Heck, Professor at the University of Delaware, has published in Inorganica Chimica Acta , the Journal of Organometallic Chemistry and Tetrahedron Letters . The Negishi coupling is the palladium cross coupling reaction which uses an organozinc compound, and an organic halide to produce a new carbon-carbon covalent bond. Ei-ichi Negishi, Professor at Purdue University has published in Heterocycles , Inorganica Chimica Acta , the Journal of Molecular Catalysis A: Chemical , the Journal of Organometallic Chemistry , Polyhedron , Tetrahedron , Tetrahedron Asymmetry and Tetrahedron Letters . The Suzuki coupling is the palladium-catalysed cross coupling between organoboronic acids and halides. Akira Suzuki, Professor at Hokkaido University published one of his first papers on Pd coupling, in Tetrahedron Letters . He has also published in the Journal of Organometallic Chemistry and Tetrahedron . In recognition of the importance of their work, we are pleased to offer free access to a selection of articles that Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki have published with Elsevier. View the articles directly on ScienceDirect via the links below or access their article pdfs . Richard F. Heck Palladium catalyzed synthesis of aryl, heterocyclic and vinylic acetylene derivatives (1975) Journal of Organometallic Chemistry ,93(2),pp.259-263; Dieck, H.A., Heck, F.R. Ei-ichi Negishi Palladium-catalysed cross-coupling reaction of alkynylzincs with benzylic electrophiles (2005) Tetrahedron Letters , 46 (16), pp. 2927-2930. Qian, M., Negishi, E.-I. Palladium-catalyzed or -promoted reductive carbon-carbon coupling. Effects of phosphines and carbon ligands (1987) Journal of Organometallic Chemistry , 334 (1-2), pp. 181-194; Negishi, E.-i., Takahashi, T., Akiyoshi, K. A convenient synthesis of unsymmetrical bibenzyls homoallylarenes, and homopropargylarenes via palladium-catalyzed cross coupling (1983) Tetrahedron Letters,24 (36),pp. 3823-3824; Ei-ichi Negishi, Hajime Matsushita, Makoto Kobayashi, Cynthia L. Rand. Highly selective synthesis of allylated arenes and diarylmethanes via palladium-catalyzed cross coupling involving benzylic derivatives (1981)Tetrahedron Letters,22 (29), pp. 2715-2718; Ei-ichi Negishi, Hajime Matsushita, Nobuhisa Okukado Akira Suzuki A new stereospecific cross-coupling by the palladium-catalyzed reaction of 1-alkenylboranes with 1-alkenyl or 1-alkynyl halides (1979) Tetrahedron Letters , 20 (36), pp. 3437-3440; Miyaura, N., Yamada, K., Suzuki, A. Cross-coupling reactions of 1-alkenylboranes with 3,4-epoxy-1-butene catalyzed by palladium or nickel complexes (1982)Journal of Organometallic Chemistry,233 (2), pp. C13-C16; Miyaura N, Tanabe Y, Suginome H, et al . A stereospecific synthesis of conjugated ( E , Z )- and ( Z , Z )-alikadienes by a palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction of 1-alkenylboranes with 1-alkenyl bromides (1981) Tetrahedron Letters,22(2), pp. 127-130 ; Miyaura, N., Suginome, H., Suzuki, A. Richard F. Heck Ei-ichi Negishi Akira Suzuki For more information on Elsevier's Chemistry Journals: www.elsevier.com/chemistry Data Protection Notice: This e-mail has been sent to xupeiyang@vip.163.com from Elsevier Science Technology Journals, Radarweg 29, 1043 NX Amsterdam, The Netherlands, using smartFOCUS DIGITAL technology and platform. To ensure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please click here to add our address to your safe senders list. You are receiving this e-mail from us because you are a registered user of the Elsevier-Alerts microsite or were a registered user of Elsevier's Chemweb platform and in the belief that it will be of interest. 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http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7319/full/nature09534.html#/affil-auth A map of human genome variation from population-scale sequencing The 1000 Genomes Project Consortium Affiliations Contributions Corresponding author Journal name: Nature Volume: 467 , Pages: 10611073 Date published: (28 October 2010) DOI: doi:10.1038/nature09534 Received 20 July 2010 Accepted 30 September 2010 Published online 27 October 2010 Abstract Abstract Introduction Data generation, alignment and variant discovery Power to detect variants Genotype accuracy Putative functional variants Application to association studies Mutation, recombination and natural selection Discussion Methods References Acknowledgements Author information Supplementary information Comments Article tools 日本語要約 Print Email Download PDF Download citation Order reprints Rights and permissions Share/bookmark Connotea Cite U Like Facebook Twitter Delicious Digg The 1000 Genomes Project aims to provide a deep characterization of human genome sequence variation as a foundation for investigating the relationship between genotype and phenotype. Here we present results of the pilot phase of the project, designed to develop and compare different strategies for genome-wide sequencing with high-throughput platforms. We undertook three projects: low-coverage whole-genome sequencing of 179 individuals from four populations; high-coverage sequencing of two motherfatherchild trios; and exon-targeted sequencing of 697 individuals from seven populations. We describe the location, allele frequency and local haplotype structure of approximately 15 million single nucleotide polymorphisms, 1 million short insertions and deletions, and 20,000 structural variants, most of which were previously undescribed. We show that, because we have catalogued the vast majority of common variation, over 95% of the currently accessible variants found in any individual are present in this data set. On average, each person is found to carry approximately 250 to 300 loss-of-function variants in annotated genes and 50 to 100 variants previously implicated in inherited disorders. We demonstrate how these results can be used to inform association and functional studies. From the two trios, we directly estimate the rate of de novo germline base substitution mutations to be approximately 10 8 per base pair per generation. We explore the data with regard to signatures of natural selection, and identify a marked reduction of genetic variation in the neighbourhood of genes, due to selection at linked sites. These methods and public data will support the next phase of human genetic research. Subject terms: Genetics Genomics
All these news stories, and more, are available at: news.sciencemag.org Today's news from Science Friday, 30 July 2010 Podcast: Orbital Gridlock, Rubber Band Physics, and More Do mind melds enable effective communication? How can researchers alleviate satellite traffic jams? And what does a rubber band look like when you effectively roll it down a hill?... http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/podcast-orbital-gridlock-rubber.html?etoc Science Shot: Neutrino Observatory Picks Up Cosmic Rays IceCube confirms uneven distribution of rays in the southern sky http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/scienceshot-neutrino-observatory.html?etoc Science Shot: Duck Penises Size up the Competition Ducks grow larger genitalia to outdo their rivals http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/scienceshot-duck-penises-size-up.html?etoc Science Shot: How Locusts are Like Magnets Math helps explain how a cloud of locusts is able to suddenly shift direction http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/scienceshot-how-locusts-are-like.html?etoc FDA Lifts Hold on First-Ever Embryonic Stem Cell Trial Regulators have given a green light to the world's first approved experiment using embryonic stem cells to treat a human disease. In the phase I clinical trial, Geron Corp.... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/fda-lifts-hold-on-first-ever-embryonic.html?etoc Curbing Domestic Violence in Chickens New research could help poultry farmers stop their hens from tearing each other to pieces http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/curbing-domestic-violence-in-chi.html?etoc Marijuana Time Warp Active ingredient in cannabis disrupts the body's internal clock http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/marijuana-time-warp.html?etoc New Director Shakes Up Management of Fusion Project Just 2 days after becoming director-general of ITER, the international project aiming to prove the viability of fusion as an energy source, Osamu Motojima has a message he wants... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/new-director-shakes-up-management.html?etoc British Medical Council Trades One Knight for Another The United Kingdom's Medical Research Council has named University of Edinburgh inflammation researcher John Savill as the successor to its current head, Leszek Borysiewicz, who will later this year... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/british-medical-council-trades.html?etoc House Hearing Explores Debate Over Free Access to Journal Articles The fight over mandating free access to papers based on research funded by taxpayer dollars is again heating up in Washington, D.C. Yesterday, lawmakers discussed expanding the National Institutes... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/house-hearing-explores-debate.html?etoc EPA to Virginia: What Climate Conspiracy? A group of critics of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) decision to regulate greenhouse gases as a public health hazard were rebuffed today in an administrative move by the... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/epa-to-virginia-what-climate-conspiracy.html?etoc
All these news stories, and more, are available at: news.sciencemag.org Today's news from Science Thursday, 29 July 2010 EPA to Virginia: What Climate Conspiracy? A group of critics of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) decision to regulate greenhouse gases as a public health hazard were rebuffed today in an administrative move by the... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/epa-to-virginia-what-climate-conspiracy.html?etoc Deadly Viruses Have Been Part of Us for Millions of Years Humans, zebrafish, and other vertebrates host viral fossils in their DNA http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/deadly-viruses-have-been-part-of.html?etoc Island Monkeys Give Clues to Origins of HIV's Ancestor Virus passed from monkeys to chimps about 22,000 years ago http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/island-monkeys-give-clues-to-ori.html?etoc Science Shot: Why Are Male Whales Humping Each Other? Researchers examine a curious case at a Canadian aquarium http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/scienceshot-why-are-male-whales.html?etoc Tough Food Makes Coyotes Better Biters Pups who gnaw on bones develop shorter and thicker skulls http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/tough-food-makes-coyotes-better-.html?etoc After Carbon Cap Funeral, Renewables Mandate Probably Dead in Senate, Too With the cap-and-trade option for carbon reduction buried in the U.S. Senate at least until 2011, yesterday Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (DNV) began to drive nails into the... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/after-carbon-cap-funeral-renewables.html?etoc Scientists Balk at BP Recruitment Efforts, Restrictive Contracts Last Thursday, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) blasted BP for its chilling practice of slapping restrictive confidentiality agreements on the university scientists it has hired to study... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/scientists-balk-at-bp-recruitment.html?etoc Report: U.S. Ill Prepared to Trace Exploded Nukes If a terrorist group were to strike the United States with a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb, one of the first things authorities would have to do is... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/report-us-ill-prepared-to-trace.html?etoc NOAA Has 10 Answers to Allegations That 'Climategate' Disproves Warming The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a report today on 2009's climate, which says the decade of the 2000s was the warmest since readings were first kept.... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/noaa-has-10-answers-to-allegatio.html?etoc Bat Caves Closed by Feds To stop the possible western spread of white-nose syndrome, the U.S. Forest Service has issued an order to temporarily shut all caves and abandoned mines on federal lands in... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/bat-caves-closed-by-feds.html?etoc
All these news stories, and more, are available at: news.sciencemag.org Today's news from Science Wednesday, 28 July 2010 The Physics of a Rolling Rubber Band Researchers model what happens when a rubber band rolls downhill http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/the-physics-of-a-rolling-rubber-.html?etoc How to Alleviate an Orbital Traffic Jam Solar sails could push satellites into previously impossible orbits http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/how-to-alleviate-an-orbital-traf.html?etoc International Fusion Effort Finally Gets Go-Ahead, and a New Leader As expected, the governing council of the ITER fusion effort today finally approved the project's so-called Baseline, the document outlining its design, schedule, and costs and confirmed Japanese fusion-scientist... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/international-fusion-effort.html?etoc Critical Ocean Organisms Are Disappearing Phytoplankton decline could spell trouble for climate and marine food webs http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/critical-ocean-organisms-are-dis.html?etoc This Is Your Brain Off Drugs: Why Pharma May Be Cooling on Psychiatry Drugs Earlier this year, pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca announced it was ceasing drug-discovery research for psychiatric disorders such as depression and schizophrenia. The move, along with cutbacks at other companies, has... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/this-is-your-brain-off-drugs-why.html?etoc
All these news stories, and more, are available at: news.sciencemag.org Today's news from Science Tuesday, 27 July 2010 Jumping Genes Shed Light on Marsupial Migration Genetic footprint reveals pouched mammals' relationships http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/jumping-genes-shed-light-on-mars.html?etoc Senate Spending Panel Approves $1 Billion Boost for NIH Like its House of Representatives counterpart 2 weeks ago, a Senate subcommittee today matched President Barack Obama's request for a $1 billion increase in 2011 for the National Institutes... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/senate-spending-panel-approves-1.html?etoc Unsubscribe or edit your subscriptions for this service at: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/alerts/main Written requests to unsubscribe may be sent to: AAAS / Science, 1200 New York Avenue NW, Washington DC 20005, U.S.A.
All these news stories, and more, are available at: news.sciencemag.org Today's news from Science Monday, 26 July 2010 'Locked-In' Patients Can Follow Their Noses New technology could allow paralyzed patients to type and move a wheelchair by sniffing http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/locked-in-patients-can-follow-th.html?etoc 'Mind Meld' Enables Good Conversation When two people talk, similar areas of their brain activate http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/mind-meld-enables-good-conversat.html?etoc Obscure Immune Cells Thwart Ticks New technique for deleting cells allows researchers to pin down their function http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/obscure-immune-cells-thwart-tick.html?etoc Data Leak: Galaxy Rich in Earth-Like Planets NASA didn't plan it this way, but earlier this month a co-investigator on the Kepler satellite mission in the hunt for other Earth-like planets announced to a conference in... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/data-leak-galaxy-rich-in-earth.html?etoc No Sighting of Higgs, But Fermilab Physicists Say They May Be Close Spurred by new limits on prized particle's mass, scientists push to run their atom smasher three more years http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/no-sighting-of-higgs-but-fermila.html?etoc World's Biggest Particle Physics Lab May Idle All Accelerators in 2012 PARISParticle physicists and science fans everywhere knew that the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland, would shut down the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest atom... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/worlds-biggest-particle-physics-.html?etoc
All these news stories, and more, are available at: news.sciencemag.org Today's news from Science Friday, 23 July 2010 Podcast: IVF Roulette, Cells with Good Memories, and the Biggest Stars Ever Listen to a roundup of some of our favorite stories from the week http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/podcast.html?etoc Bacteria Bring Leaves Back From the Dead Microbes in moths resurrect leaves so that the insects can feast upon them http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/bacteria-bring-leaves-back-from-.html?etoc Senate COMPETES With House on Priorities for NSF A key Senate panel yesterday approved its version of a bill to reauthorize programs at the National Science Foundation (NSF). The America COMPETES Reauthorization Act (S.3605) reflects the interests... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/senate-competes-with-house.html?etoc With Cap and Trade Sidelined, Obama and States Can Still Cut a Lot On the day after hopes for a mandatory U.S. cap on greenhouse gases evaporated, a new report by the World Resources Institute delivers a timely message: Using existing federal,... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/with-cap-and-trade-sidelined-oba.html?etoc Earth as an Extrasolar Planet Astronomers successfully test a technique that could be used to find life beyond our solar system http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/earth-as-an-extrasolar-planet.html?etoc Qualified Good News on Subsea Dispersed Oil Plumes: Continued Low Oil Concentrations, No Dead Zones A second report by a multiagency team of government and academic scientists, working on five research vessels between 19 May and 19 June finds the distribution of the plumes... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/qualified-good-news-on-subsea.html?etoc New Chief for Child Health Institute The nation's lead research institute devoted to child development and reproductive health has a new director. Alan Guttmacher, 60, who had been acting director of the National Institute of... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/new-chief-for-child-health.html?etoc As Climate Bill Falters, Steve Schneider Might Have Counseled Optimism Seeing the official downfall for the year of any climate legislation in Congressa development so depressing to manyI thought of climatologist Steve Schneider, who passed away on Monday at... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/as-climate-bill-falters-steve.html?etoc Good News in Gulf: Government Reduces Area Closed to Fishing by One-Third For the first time in months, the government has good news for Gulf of Mexico fishermen: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has decided to reopen a 68,345... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/good-news-in-gulf-government.html?etoc Senate Panel Tells NSF to Train More Cyber-Security Personnel A Senate spending panel wants the National Science Foundation (NSF) to triple its investment in training the next generation of cyber-security professionals. But pleading poverty, it's trimmed in half... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/senate-panel-tells-nsf-to-train.html?etoc Unsubscribe or edit your subscriptions for this service at: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/alerts/main
All these news stories, and more, are available at: news.sciencemag.org Today's news from Science Wednesday, 21 July 2010 Science Shot: Anti-Malaria Drug Bleaches Hair Woman who overdoses on chloroquine gets a surprising new doo http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/scienceshot-anti-malaria-drug.html?etoc U.S. Energy Research 2011 Funding Outlook Decent as ARPA-E Cashes In The Senate spending panel that oversees science at the Department of Energy (DOE) has released a few details about a draft 2011 appropriations bill that passed out of subcommittee... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/us-energy-research-2011-funding.html?etoc Planned Trial of Diabetes Drug Avandia Runs Aground A large study to test the safety of the controversial diabetes drug Avandia has been put on partial hold by the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA held a... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/planned-trial-of-diabetes-drug.html?etoc Video: Airplane Perches Like a Bird Glider could come in for a landing on a telephone wire without stalling http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/video-airplane-perches-like.html?etoc Senate Panel Backs Budget Increases for NSF, NASA A Senate panel largely supported President Barack Obama's requested budget increases for several research agencies today as part of its markup of a $60 billion spending bill. In a... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/senate-panel-backs-budget.html?etoc NIH Asks for Input on Closing Loophole in Conflict-of-Interest Rule Responding to yet another flap about the influence of drug companies on biomedical research, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has decided it needs more time to revise its... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/nih-asks-for-input-on-closing.html?etoc Science Shot: Presenting the Little Folks of the Solar System Montage captures every visited asteroid and comet http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/scienceshot-presenting-the-littl.html?etoc A New Way to Map the Universe Approach could trace as much as 50% of the observable universe far faster and cheaper than current surveys can http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/a-new-way-to-map-the-universe.html?etoc Science Shot: Marmots Thrive on Climate Change Warming world is causing rodents to grow bigger and produce more offspring http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/scienceshot-marmots-thrive-on-cl.html?etoc Stellar Heavyweight Breaks the Scales One supergiant smashes prevailing theory about star mass http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/stellar-heavyweight-breaks-the-s.html?etoc Science Shot: Tiny Amphibian, Long Life Human fish can live up to 100 years--much longer than expected for its size http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/scienceshot-tiny-amphibian-long-.html?etoc Duke Suspends Clinical Trials After Scandal Over Padded Resum Duke University has suspended three cancer clinical trials in response to allegations that a key researcher on the studies embellished his resum. The uproar began last week when The... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/duke-suspends-clinical-trials-af.html?etoc
All these news stories, and more, are available at: news.sciencemag.org Today's news from Science Tuesday, 20 July 2010 Duke Suspends Clinical Trials After Scandal Over Padded Resum Duke University has suspended three cancer clinical trials in response to allegations that a key researcher on the studies embellished his resum. The uproar began last week when The... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/duke-suspends-clinical-trials-af.html?etoc Zooming In on Future Water Shortages A new analysis suggests that by 2050 climate change will raise the risk of water shortages in one-third of U.S. counties. The report was commissioned by the Natural Resources... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/zooming-in-on-future-water-short.html?etoc Anti-HIV Gel Also Effective Against Herpesvirus Double-hit microbicide could be a powerful tool in fighting epidemic http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/anti-hiv-gel-also-effective-agai.html?etoc Science Shot: A Moon-Maker Among Saturn's Rings Tiny Prometheus causes F Ring particles to clump http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/scienceshot-a-moon-maker-among.html?etoc House Joins Senate in Rebuffing Obama on Crewed Space Flight In yet another sign that Congress and the White House are a long way off from agreeing on NASA's fate, the House science committee is considering an authorization bill... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/house-joins-senate-in-rebuffing.html?etoc European Bureaucrats Raid Research, Ag Funds to Pay for Fusion Reactor The European Commission, the E.U.'s executive body, revealed today how it intends to pay for the ballooning cost of the international ITER fusion reactor, which is due to begin... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/european-bureaucrats-raid-resear.html?etoc
All these news stories, and more, are available at: news.sciencemag.org Today's news from Science Monday, 19 July 2010 Should Smuggled Madagascar Frogs Be Returned Home? Conservation biologists are celebrating last week's bust of Madagascar animal smugglers at the airport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. But in an ironic twist, they're now scrambling to ensure that... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/should-smuggled-madagascar-frogs.html?etoc Obama's National Ocean Policy It wouldn't have prevented the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but a new national ocean policy, announced today by the White House, was welcomed by environmentalists. The... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/obamas-national-ocean-policy.html?etoc Science Shot: Burrowing Moles Breathe Easy Molecular quirk helps mammals survive in limited oxygen environments http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/scienceshot-burrowing-moles-brea.html?etoc Prominent Duke Cancer Researcher Put On Leave Over Allegedly Embellishing Credentials A cancer genomics researcher at Duke University has been put on leave after administrators learned that he falsely claimed to have been a Rhodes scholar. The school took the... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/prominent-duke-cancer-researcher.html?etoc Climate Scientist-Activist Stephen Schneider Has Died Stephen Schneider, 65, died today as his flight to London from a science meeting in Stockholm was landinga sad but fitting end for a busy climate scientist who rarely... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/stephen-schneider.html?etoc Will IVF Work for You? New model attempts to calculate the odds of in vitro fertilization success http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/will-ivf-work-for-you.html?etoc At Last, Vaginal Gel Scores Victory Against HIV Women who used gel had a 39% lower chance of becoming infected by the virus than those who received a placebo http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/at-last-vaginal-gel-scores-victo.html?etoc The Persistence of Memory ... in Reprogrammed Cells Researchers can turn an adult cell embryonic, but they can't make it forget where it came from http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/the-persistence-of-memory-in-rep.html?etoc
All these news stories, and more, are available at: news.sciencemag.org Today's news from Science Friday, 16 July 2010 Energy Research Takes a Hit in House Spending Bill for 2011 Not-so-happy days may be here again for scientists supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). In a mark-up of the budget for 2011, a spending panel in the... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/energy-research-takes-a-hit-in.html?etoc Science Shot: A Quasi-Stellar Looking Glass The distorting power of gravity helps scientists stare down the universe's brightest objects http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/scienceshot-a-quasi-stellar-look.html?etoc The Case of the Poisoned Fuel Cell New catalysts could revive efforts to power fuel cells with gasoline and other liquid fuels http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/the-case-of-the-poisoned-fuel-ce.html?etoc Paul Nurse to Midwife Birth of London Super Lab The man with the plan now has to make it a reality while moonlighting as the president of the world's most famous science academy. Nobel laureate and Rockefeller University... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/paul-nurse-to-midwife-birth-of.html?etoc Podcast: Arctic-Inspired Vaccines, Your 'Viral Fingerprint,' and Gorillas Playing Tag Listen to a roundup of some of our favorite stories from the week http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/podcast-arctic-inspired-vaccine.html?etoc Ireland Keeps Light Shining on Science With New Spending DUBLINIn a surprise move, the Irish government (which is tottering on the brink of bankruptcy) announced today that it would inject 359 million into research. It's the largest single... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/ireland-keeps-light-shining-on.html?etoc Official Reminder: A Hotter Millennium Is a Bad Thing A committee of the National Research Council (NRC) weighed in today with the latest and most quantitative estimates yet of how the coming global warming could affect the world.... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/official-reminder-a-hotter-mille.html?etoc 'Game Over' for British Science? The Royal Society and the British Academy today strongly warned the British government that looming cuts to science funding could be irreversibly catastrophic for the future of U.K. science... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/game-over-for-british-science.html?etoc House Panel Approves 3.2% Raise for NIH in 2011 A House of Representatives spending panel yesterday approved a $1 billion increase, to $32 billion, in the 2011 budget for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). That 3.2% hike... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/house-panel-approves-32-raise.html?etoc Russian Researchers Call for Better Coordination of Science More than 2200 researchers sent an open letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last week asking the government to set Russian science in order and to consult with the... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/russian-researchers-call-for-bet.html?etoc Science Shot: High Heels Come With a Price Study reveals why women's feet hurt after they toss off their fancy shoes http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/scienceshot-high-heels-come-with.html?etoc Illegal Logging Has Dropped DramaticallyOr Has It? A new analysis suggests that illegal logging has declined 22% worldwide since 2002, thanks to stricter government policies and enforcement. The progress has spared some 17 million hectares of... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/illegal-logging-has-dropped.html?etoc
Today's news from Science Thursday, 15 July 2010 Illegal Logging Has Dropped DramaticallyOr Has It? A new analysis suggests that illegal logging has declined 22% worldwide since 2002, thanks to stricter government policies and enforcement. The progress has spared some 17 million hectares of... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/illegal-logging-has-dropped.html?etoc A New Engine for Plate Tectonics Sinking slabs may set the pace of plate motion http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/a-new-engine-for-plate-tectonics.html?etoc USAID Looking for Science-Based Grand Challenges During his brief stint as chief scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rajiv Shah helped focus and highlight research at the agency. This week he led a 2-day... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/usaid-looking-for-science-based.html?etoc Science Shot: How to Get a Roller Coaster Rider to Give to Charity Consumers are more likely to donate when they can name their own price http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/scienceshot-how-to-get-a-roller.html?etoc Headcount of Sea Turtles Proves Elusive Government agencies don't have the data they need to accurately count populations of the six species of endangered and threatened sea turtles in the United States, says a report... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/headcount-of-sea-turtles-proves-.html?etoc Science Shot: A Jupiter-Sized 'Comet' Gusts of stellar winds give distant planet a tail http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/scienceshot-a-jupiter-sized-come.html?etoc FDA Panel Gives Avandia a Qualified Thumbs-Down Two days of complicated and sometimes convoluted statistical debate about the diabetes drug Avandia ended today but left its ultimate fate still unclear. A joint committee of endocrinology, drug... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/fda-panel-gives-avandia.html?etoc Diamonds May Unlock Secrets of Hot-Spot Volcanoes Carbon crystals offer clues to what's brewing beneath Earth's surface http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/diamonds-may-unlock-secrets-of-h.html?etoc Unsubscribe or edit your subscriptions for this service at: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/alerts/main Written requests to unsubscribe may be sent to: AAAS / Science, 1200 New York Avenue NW, Washington DC 20005, U.S.A.
All these news stories, and more, are available at: news.sciencemag.org Today's news from Science Wednesday, 14 July 2010 Diamonds May Unlock Secrets of Hot-Spot Volcanoes Carbon crystals offer clues to what's brewing beneath Earth's surface http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/diamonds-may-unlock-secrets-of-h.html?etoc Science Shot: Blinded by the X-ray Light Swift observatory is overwhelmed by super-intense gamma-ray burst http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/scienceshot-blinded-by-the-x-ray.html?etoc New Diagnostic Criteria for Alzheimer's Include Brain Scans and Spinal Taps Most Alzheimer's disease (AD) researchers agree that the disease starts ravaging the brain years, if not decades, before the first symptoms of forgetfulness appear. New criteria, proposed yesterday at... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/new-diagnostic-criteria-for.html?etoc Science Shot: How Ugly Finches Get the Girls Finches with undesirable colors join groups of other unattractive males http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/scienceshot-how-ugly-finches-get.html?etoc Judge Throws Out Case Against California Animal-Rights Activists A federal judge in San Jose has dismissed charges against four animal-rights activists accused of harassing researchers at the University of California campuses at Berkeley and Santa Cruz in... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/judge-throws-out-case-against.html?etoc Drugs + Mosquitoes = Malaria Vaccine? A dose of antibiotics can support natural immunity http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/drugs-mosquitoes-malaria-vaccine.html?etoc A Viral Wonderland in the Human Gut Poop reveals that each person harbors a unique community of viruses http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/a-viral-wonderland-in-the-human-.html?etoc A New Place to Send Your Wild Ideas Have an unpublished manuscript about the nature of navel fluff or a possible cure for death lying around? Now, there's a new journal where you can submit your ground-breaking,... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/a-new-place-to-send-your-wild.html?etoc Why Gorillas Play Tag Low-status apes may use game as ego boost http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/why-gorillas-play-tag.html?etoc Getting More Bang for the HIV/AIDS Buck? How do you ramp up HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment efforts when you have no extra money to spare? The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the Obama... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/getting-more-bang-for-the-hivaid.html?etoc Top Engineers to Investigate Cause of Oil Spill Investigations into the gulf oil disaster are multiplying. The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the National Research Council announced yesterday that they are assembling an expert committee of... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/top-engineers-to-investigate.html?etoc
All these news stories, and more, are available at: news.sciencemag.org Fish and Wildlife Service Names Science Adviser Gabriela Chavarria of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has been picked as the science adviser for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Trained as an entomologist, Chavarria studied... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/fish-and-wildlife-service-names.html?etoc Varmus Targets 'Dysfunction,' Scientific Barriers in Cancer Research Harold Varmus, the new but familiar leader of the National Cancer Institute, spent part of his first day yesterday describing some of the ideas percolating through my cerebrum before... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/varmus-targets-dysfunction.html?etoc Tighten Those Purse Strings, Scientists Tell NASA A committee of the National Research Council warned today that steps recently taken by NASA to contain spiraling costs of future space missions won't be enough. The committee's report... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/tighten-those-purse-strings.html?etoc European Union Ministers: No New Money for Giant Fusion Reactor In a decision that may threaten funding for other European science efforts, the European Union's 27 member states look set this week to formally decline a request from the... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/european-union-ministers-no-new.html?etoc Why the Oil Spill Didn't Change the Climate Game: Author Says Blame Obama The Senate climate/energy bill expected to emerge this week is likely to lack a cap on greenhouse gases. Even a much-discussed, watered-down version to impose restrictions on the power... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/why-the-oil-spill-didnt-change.html?etoc Amazon Hit by Its Own Katrina Severe storm mowed down vast swaths of rainforest http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/amazon-hit-by-its-own-katrina.html?etoc
A Letter from the Editor Beyond X 2.0: Where Should We Go? Fei-Yue Wang I believe data mining methods are critical to both the era of Web 2.0 and beyond it; where everyone is either acting as a data-mining-driven agent or conducting agent-driven data mining. Our special issue on Agents and Data Mining covers key research topics, applications, and resources of agent mining research and development. This emerging field could make Web 2.0 even more effective and useful. The special issue reminds me of an essay I read some time ago in Computer World (the Chinese version) which stated that Web 2.0 is a great lie in the course of web history. The author claimed that: 1) Web 2.0 is an empty concept; 2) Web 2.0 is misleading; 3) Web 2.0 is unscientific; and 4) Web 2.0 takes credit for many past and emerging web innovations without justification. I was surprised by this essay, not by the authors accusations, but by his seriousness about the academic merit and logic of Web 2.0. While I was writing this letter on my flight across the Pacific, I happened upon an article in The Economist titled Six years in the Valley, which explained the conceptualization and motivation behind Web 2.0. Towards the end of 2003, two conference organizers Dale Dougherty and Tim OReilly coined the term in an effort to rally Silicon Valley from its nuclear winter after the dotcom burst. The first Web 2.0 Conference took place October 2004 in San Francisco and created a stir. Since then Web 2.0 has become a wildly popular phrase, so much so that Mr. OReilly started fretting that it become a clich, and was being applied to so many things that it was in danger of becoming meaningless. Even worse some have started to fear that behind the Web 2.0 totem of collective intelligence an insidious digital Maoism that suppressed individuality. Others have observed an unhealthy trend towards continuous partial attention, as people spent less time focusing on a single thing or person because they were constantly scanning so many other thingsfrom Facebook to e-mail and their phonesfor fear of missing out on some social opportunity. The most dangerous aspect is that Web 2.0 derives its principal economic support from advertising, but with todays world financial crisis, advertisement is collapsing. Thus, Web 2.0 could send the Valley to yet another nuclear winter. So where do we go from here? From Web 2.0 to X 2.0 Fortunately, the main value of Web 2.0 is not its economic worth, but its social and cultural contributions, not in just Silicon Valley , but in Cyberspace. In terms of technology or science, there is nothing new or innovative in Web 2.0. It is neither reasonable nor fair to ask two conference organizers to provide a technical breakthrough in web technology. However, Web 2.0 is indeed a breakthrough in inspiring a new attitude towards interacting and sharing through the internet, cultivating a new lifestyle in cyberspace. We have witnessed the impact of Web 2.0 by watching X 2.0 mushrooming everywhere: Politics 2.0, Government 2.0, Education 2.0, Science 2.0, Business 2.0, Publishing 2.0, Entertainment 2.0, Emergency 2.0, you name it! Mr. BarackObama was dubbed the President 2.0, elected in the first real Campaign 2.0. Last year, I myself wrote an article about Management 2.0 and gave a presentation on Control 2.0 to graduate students at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. With X 2.0 all over the place, our life is now even more closely intertwined with the Web, changing our lifestyle forever. As a business model, Web 2.0 may continue to sell negligible advertising, but its grander vision emerges from a rapid and interactive social dynamic process governed by Mertons self-fulfilling prophecy . With the semantic web dubbed Web 3.0, and perhaps social computing as Web 4.0, the future of the Web is getting to be more and more fascinating. Soon, Cyberspace, the so-called virtual space, will be as real to us as our familiar physical space. Like the mathematical concept of complex numbers, which includes both real and imagery numbers, with each taking 50% of the total, our future living environments should be called complex spaces, half physical and half virtual. If you think this is simply a far-reached fantasy, then think back to 400 years ago, when imagery numbers were thought not to exist. Today, they are half of all numbers. As the concept of numbers has changed, the concept of spaces will evolve as well. I am sure this time that it will take us less than 400 years to realize that cyberspace is as real as anything and will be half of our future world, no more, no less, just half. Although the progression from Web 2.0 to X 2.0 and beyond is driven by technology, it is essentially a social and cultural phenomenon. Web 2.0 is not a great lie in the Webs history; rather its social dimension simply makes a purely academic judgment invalid. Why X 2.0 Matters: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly X 2.0 is the first step towards a new world in an open and primitive complex space that intertwines real and virtual. However, this is not the reason why it matters: X 2.0 matters because of the unprecedented level of scale and speed of its social impact and consequence . A vivid example is the Human Flesh Search Engine, a new phenomenon that has swept China in recent years: unexpected digital witch hunts of common people with uncommon behaviors. Ordinary Chinese netizens can become cyber-vigilantes and online communities can turn into the worlds largest lynch mobs, sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad and sometimes just plain ugly. Wielding the vast human power behind the web, the every detail of targeted victims, from their private information to their social networks, were combed through, dug up and published on hundreds of forums and chat rooms. With close to 300 million Chinese citizens wired up to the Internet, a large number of netizens can be easily mobilized to participate in such a search; the vb results are fearful and uniquely Chinese! Thus far, a few local government officials were arrested for corruptions uncovered by the human flesh search, initiated by their exorbitant use of luxury items. Their crimes, such as smoking expensive cigarettes or wearing expensive watches, were spotted in public meetings by netizens. However, the few who dare to be outspoken or behave eccentrically have to face, unjustified, the wrath of an online mob; a few, including a college girl and an actress, were murdered or committed suicide as a direct result of tremendous anger or peer pressure launched by the human fresh search, all for insignificant or unproved wrongdoings! Some local Chinese legislators have passed bills seeking toban the human flesh search engine. Their actions have sparked a nationwide controversy over an individual's right to privacy versus the public's right to the truth. On a lighter note, the Internet has produced many web versions of a modern Cinderella story, as witnessed recently by Scottish singer Susan Boyles instant rise to fame, which was possible only with the facilitation of Web 2.0 applications such as YouTube, Facebook , and Twitter . Boyles story has an earlier Chinese version, called Lotus Sister, where an average girl was able to achieve sudden fame by posting her weird poses on campus forums, and subsequently made a living off her phenomenal Internet success. While I am happy for these instant Web 2.0 stars, I am worried about the potential use of such tools by criminals or terrorists for insidious purposes. To them, true or false, good or bad, does not matter; it is the result that matters. This is why I have called such phenomena web tumors, so far they have been benign, but we must be prepared in case they become malignant to web cancers. All of this convinces me that the Tower of Babel story has an important point. Some times, we must curb our ability and slow our desires and pride. Beyond X 2.0 I believe there must be a balance between the capacities of technology, humanitys adaptability, and natures sustainability, but we must move forward. The first thing we need is a new framework for computational sociology suitable for complex analysis in complex spaces and real-time computable when dealing with issues of cyber/physical interactions. A century ago, studies of particles, the universe, and the speed of light led to such modern theories in physics as relativity, cosmology, and quantum mechanics, it has since developed into the basis of our current technology, including web technology. Social studies face the same problem now: while the web is able to link all individuals (social particles) to the whole population (social universe) through instant information change at the speed of light, to move forward safely and effectively as a society, we must find the modern physics counterpart of sociology for social studies. Another important thing is that we need to think about the bigger picture and change our attitude toward web technology and X 2.0 applications. The industrial age was built upon natural resources (coal, ore, crude oils, etc), and extended our physical space and capacity greatly. From those resources, we have developed steel, energy, chemical and other industries. Now we are at the edge of the knowledge age and our intellectual space and capacity can be extended significantly, but where and what are the natural resources and industries for this new age? I believe data in cyberspace must be one of major resources for the construction of this new age and search engines are one example of its corresponding new industries. More knowledge industries can come out of Web 2.0 and X 2.0; this is where we should go next. C omputers started as simple computing devices and developed into computer sciences and information technology, now the Internet created for a platform for easier communication is developing into new web technology and sciences. As a result, I hope our intellectual space and capacity will be enhanced greatly and that the knowledge age will soon be as mature as the industrial or information age. The road to this destination may be uncertain and cloudy, but luckily, we now have cloud computing and fuzzy logic to help. For our readers, one thing is very clear, AI and intelligent systems will be critical to our final success . A Letter from Editor (From IEEE Intelligent Systems)
A Letter from the Editor Is Culture Computable? Fei-Yue Wang I enjoyed reading the articles in this special issue on AI Cultural Heritage , thanks to the great effort of our guest editors. The issue summaries the state of the art in this area with interesting and successful results. Clearly, AI has played and will continue to play a vital role in preserving, enhancing, and presenting our cultural heritage. Here I would like to discuss a related topic: the emerging field of social and cultural computing, which is a natural extension of the research work described in this issue. The demand is urgent for effective computing methods to deal with various social and cultural problems such as homeland security and the world financial crisis. AI should and must play the key role in addressing these issues. However, this begs the question, is culture really computable? At this point, I have no definitive answer; it all depends on the answer to the follow-up question, In what sense? To a large degree, I believe that if we can solve the problem of reasoning or computing with common senses, then we should be able to conduct culture or social computing effectively. But common senses is currently out of question because the topic itself still reminds one of the most difficulty challenges in AI research. Although the answer to the fundamental computability of culture is not clear, we must forge ahead because we simply cannot afford the consequence of avoiding cultural computing now. Over the past three years, our magazine has been leading the effort in promoting this new field by publishing important articles and dedicating a related special issue to this emerging field. Many similar activities have been launched recently around the world, for examples, ACM Beijing Chapters Workshop on Societal Security Informatics in 2006, Chinas 299 th Xiang Shan Scientific Conference on Social Computing in April 2007 (Figure 1), Harvards Workshop on Computational Social Sciences in December 2007, International Conference on Social Computing (SoCo 2008) (in conjunction with the 2008 IEEE Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics), and Beijings Seminar on Social Computing, a regular academic salon series for open scientific discussion funded by the Chinese Association of Science and Technology (Figure 2). Since last May, AAAS Science has also published at least four articles directly related to social and cultural computing, and I am glad to see that some articles are based on research reported earlier in Intelligent Systems . Will those activities bring us hope or hype towards a solid scientific foundation for social and cultural computing? I am hopeful and optimistic, and believe this could be the beginning of a new era in computing that would seamlessly integrate information technology with social sciences in a connected world. Of course, this is far from futurist Ray Kurzweils singularity, the point where the functionality of the human brain is quantifiable in terms of technology that we can build (some also claim that, at the singularity, machine intelligence will surpass our human intelligence, for good or bad), but I do hope the final success of social and cultural computing will bring us close to statistician I. J. Goods intelligence explosion . To this end, our RD effort for social or cultural computing must incorporate concepts and methods from several other related emerging areas. Computational Thinking Computer scientist Jeannette M. Wing, in her essay Computational Thinking published in the Communication of ACM , argued that computational thinking represents a universally applicable attitude and skill set everyone, not just computer scientists, would be eager to learn and use. She also advocated that to reading, writing, and arithmetic, we should add computational thinking to every childs analytical ability. When this vision becomes realty, or at least a reality among social and cultural researchers, then a solid discipline of social and cultural computing will be created and utilized everywhere and by everyone. This will require a long term project of tremendous effort, but the concept of computational thinking could bring both instant help and long term benefit to research and education of social and cultural computing. With computational thinking, descriptive hypotheses and processes in social sciences and cultural studies can be reformulated into computational procedures for quantitative analysis. Furthermore, various derivatives of social laws, such as Mertons self-fulfilling prophecy , might be used as governing laws for social dynamic systems, similar to governing laws, like Newtons laws, for natural or physical processes. For example, in social-technological areas, Moores Law has been quite helpful in facilitating business planning and product development for semiconductor related industries. Other eponymous laws, such as Metcalfes, Reeds, Sarnoffs laws, might also be valuable for social computing and cultural modeling. Russell and Popper If you think sociologist Merton is too ambiguous for scientific computing, lets delve even further into the teachings of philosopher s Bertrand Russell and Karp Popper. In his famous lecture Why I Am Not A Christian , delivered more than 80 years ago in London, Russell stated that a great many things we thought were natural laws are really human conventions, the laws at which you arrive are statistical averages of just the sort that would emerge from chance, and the whole idea that natural laws imply a lawgiver is due to a confusion between natural and human laws. For many, his statements and arguments made this whole business of natural law much less impressive than it formerly was, as a result, I hope it has also justified the use of generalized Mertons laws in scientific computing. If you have little confidence in Russells idea, Poppers theory of reality may help you. His model of the universe includes three interacting worlds: World 1 the physical world, World 2 the mental world, and World 3 the artificial world of products from the human mind . World 3 is home to abstract objects such as theories , stories , myths , tools , social institutions , and works of art . It contains the objective knowledge upon which all scientific theories are formed, which enables them to be criticized and potentially falsified . Therefore, World 3 provides a nurturing environment for social and cultural computing. The emergence of new modeling and analysis methods using artificial life and artificial societies testify to the usefulness of Poppers theory. For example, by modeling with artificial societies, many difficult technical issues in social sciences, such as the counterfactual effects in unobserved heterogeneity and the causes of effects in identification problems, can be easily addressed. Cultural Learning and Social Learning Computationally or philosophically, we cannot just thinking, we need real and more actions. From my ACP-based mechanism that promotes modeling with artificial societies, analysis by computational experiments, decision support and making through parallel execution, to the Cultural Reasoning Architecture for socio-cultural analysis, many approaches have been proposed so far. However, we still havent fully and systematically investigated machine learning and data mining techniques for social and cultural computing. For more than a decade, machine learning has transformed statistics. It is now a common practice for statistics departments to hire computer scientists and computer science departments to embrace statistics programs. The success of machine learning in statistical learning suggests that social learning and cultural learning are also promising directions for social computing and cultural modeling. After all, statistics is the most important tool of modeling and analysis in social sciences and cultural studies. With machine learning, we can proceed in a unified fashion for analysis of social and cultural issues, from individual conditions and behaviors, social activities and processes, to organizational states and behaviors, that is, from individual clustering to social stratification, and eventually to various functionalities of social organizations. Social and cultural learning would be even more powerful if it is combined with or embedded in construction of artificial societies, as well as Kathleen Carleys computational organization theory. A few years ago, I had discussed with some our Associate Editors about the choice between social computing and social learning for a special issue in IS , we ended up with a social computing issue in 2007. I am glad to inform you that, to continue our effort, we have already scheduled another special issue on social and cultural learning in 2010. Computational Culture To me, culture is embodied in how people interact with other individuals and with their environment. Therefore, its a way of life formed under specific historical, natural, and social conditions. Culture is not and will not be a science, no matter what we can accomplish with social and cultural computing. However, with the accelerated advancement of IT technology, we may arrive at an age of computational cultures in the near future, where digital natives with computational thinking are ordinary citizens. In many aspects, we have already witnessed new computer-based lifestyles and their impact on our society during the past decade. The establishment of a computational culture depends on the spread of computational thinking thoughout every fabric of our society. I believe, as Wing pointed out, just as the printing press facilitated the spread of the three Rs, computing and computers will greatly facilitate the spread of computational thinking. As we are entering a truly connected world, the speed and scale of this spreading process can be greatly enhanced through new developments and effective applications of social and cultural computing techniques. In many senses, we will be forced to enter the age of computational culture because survivability and sustainability might otherwise be at risk, owing to the unprecedented speed and scale of social changes caused by new scientific and technologic developments. From semantic web to web science to our last special issue on semantic scientific knowledge integration, IS has significantly contributed to promoting new research, development, and application towards this new digital age, and we will continue to be a leading force in this endeavor. B ack to my original question: Is culture computable ? My answer for now is, lets focus on the current tasks and potential consequence of social and cultural computing. Figure 1. Fei-Yue Wang co-organized and chaired the 299 th Xiangshan Scientific Conference on Social Computing at Fragrance Mountain, Beijing, China, in 2007. Figure 2. A discussion at the CAST Seminar on Social Computing at KuanGou, Beijing, China in 2008
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