But the reality proves that our food isn’t nearly as safe as we think it is. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 48 million people contract a foodborne illness annually, and approximately 3000 of those die [1]. E. coli and Salmonella often get the most press time of the foodborne illnesses, but they aren’t the only ones that are dangerous. In spite of the technological advancement in the United States, foodborne illness, especially in beef, persists in being a problem.

In fact, as the food production industry, especially the factory farming system that produces meat, becomes more consolidated (the top four beef suppliers control 80% of the United States’ beef supply [2]) and more industrialized, it becomes easier for contaminants in food to multiply and spread. In September 2011, a Listeriosis outbreak from cantaloupe grown in Colorado infected 123 people, killed 25 and caused a miscarriage [3].The USDA cites six instances of food recalls that occurred between October 1 and October 20 alone, with reasons ranging from misbranding and undeclared allergens to E. coli and Salmonella contamination [4].

The problem, of course, is not the recalls themselves. Recalls only mean that the companies, or the regulation bodies that oversee them, are catching their mistakes. The real problem is what can happen if the companies don’t see contamination until it’s too late. The beef industry is too closely consolidated to allow for any mistakes. In 1976, there were 1350 federally inspected beef slaughterhouses in the United States, and in 1996, 22 slaughterhouses accounted for 79% of nationally slaughtered cattle [5]. That means that a mistake in one of those slaughterhouses, or in one of the top four beef suppliers, could potentially reach a massive proportion of food products.

And, according to some, a mistake is imminent. Slaughterhouse and factory conditions have become notorious. Cattle often arrive at the slaughterhouse with smears of fecal matter on their hides, and while workers are very careful to avoid letting the meat get contaminated, there is the constant danger of contact with the fecal matter that is abundant on the cows causing E. coli contamination [6]. The flow of work is so fast and the number of carcasses so high that there is a great possibility of contamination going unnoticed.

There are several different schools of thought on what to do about rampant foodborne illness. One prominent opinion is the use of modern technology and chemistry to disinfect the meat that has been contaminated by the slaughtering process. One major proponent of this solution is Beef Products Inc., a company that has capitalized on the danger of foodborne illness. It invented the process of treating the most dangerous and traditionally unusable parts of meat with ammonia to kill pathogens [7]. This mixture of ammonia and unusable meat products is then added to ground beef in hamburgers, which the company says can help kill the pathogens in the rest of the meat. This ammonia-treated material is now in about 70% of hamburgers nationwide [8]. However, the effectiveness of this procedure came under fire when a study found high levels of contamination in Beef Products Inc.’s trimmings, which were being used by school lunch organizations. Between 2005 and 2009, their product tested positive for salmonella in 36 per 1000 tests, while other school lunch suppliers averaged nine positives per 1000 tests [9].

Other common practices include irradiating meat using gamma rays, x rays, and electron beams to kill bacteria. The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service requires that any food treated this way must be clearly labeled to increase consumer awareness, though the same standard does not apply for meat treated with ammonia [10]. The USDA also says, though, that the process is completely safe for use in food. The radiation leaves no trace, and though it doesn’t suffice as the last word on destroying pathogens, it is a start.

Another opinion, however, is that the meat production system is broken, and that these sterilization techniques are only treating the symptoms rather than the causes. With so much potential for dangerous outbreaks, some feel the factory farming system itself needs to be changed. Much of the danger occurs behind closed doors and is based on the maximization of profit and the reduction of costs. According to The New York Times, many big slaughterhouses won’t sell to grinders unless they agree not to test the meat for E. coli [11]. These kinds of dealings within the industry itself undermine efforts to keep the products safe for consumers.

Fixing this problem, therefore, would require a restructuring of the food industry itself. In order to make meat safer for consumers and less likely to contain foodborne illness, slaughterhouses and factory farms would have to be split into smaller sections, or at least have more competition in terms of smaller farms and slaughterhouses run in rural areas by families instead of corporations. As it is, economic incentives make it nearly impossible for these smaller enterprises to compete with their well-established peers, but if incentives were given for these smaller, safer, and cleaner farms and slaughterhouses, the danger would be significantly mitigated.

If this kind of restructuring is not possible, the farming and slaughtering industries must be held to a higher standard and forced to act more responsibly. Consumers must demand more accurate information about actions like infusing unusable meat parts with ammonia in hamburgers and better safety standards in these farms and slaughterhouses. Only with an economic incentive like consumer choice could these profit and efficiency-based standards be changed.

If current patterns continue, the food industry will continue to consolidate into large companies with large varieties of products. Disease spreads easiest in close proximity and large numbers, the same conditions created by large factory farms and slaughterhouses. If consumers don’t demand higher quality products with better safety measures, the industry won’t improve, and foodborne illness will continue to be a major public danger.

References

[1] “CDC – CDC and Food Safety – Food Safety.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. N.p., 15 Aug. 2011. Web. 22 Oct. 2011. <http://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/cdc-and-food-safety.html>.

[2] Food, Inc.. Dir. Robert Kenner. Perf. Eric Schlosser. Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2009. Film.

[3] “CDC – Multistate Outbreak of Listeriosis Linked to Whole Cantaloupes from Jensen Farms, Colorado – Listeriosis.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. N.p., 18 Oct. 2011. Web. 22 Oct. 2011. <http://www.cdc.gov/listeria/outbreaks/cantaloupes-jensen-farms/index.html>.

[4] “Current Recalls & Alerts (Open Federal Recall Cases for FSIS) .” USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service Home . N.p., 21 Oct. 2011. Web. 22 Oct. 2011. <http://www.fsis.usda.gov/FSIS_Recalls/Open_Federal_Cases/index.asp>.

[5] Mathews, Kenneth H. Jr., William F. Hahn, Kenneth E. Nelson, Lawrence A. Duewer, and Ronald A. Gustafson. “U.S. Beef Industry: Cattle Cycles, Price Spreads, and Packer Concentration: Beefpacker Concentration.” USDA Economic Research Service. April 1999.

[6] Moss, Michael. “The Burger That Shattered Her Life.” New York Times [New York City ] 03 Oct. 2009: n. pag. The New York Times. Web. 23 Oct. 2011.

[7] Moss, Michael. “Safety of Beef Processing Method Is Questioned.” New York Times [New York City ] 30 Dec. 2009: n. pag. The New York Times. Web. 23 Oct. 2011.

[8] Food, Inc.. Dir. Robert Kenner. Perf. Eric Schlosser. Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2009. Film.

[9] Moss, Michael. “Safety of Beef Processing Method Is Questioned.” New York Times [New York City ] 30 Dec. 2009: n. pag. The New York Times. Web. 23 Oct. 2011.

[10] “Irradiation and Food Safety.” USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service Home . United States Department of Agriculture, n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2011. <http://www.fsis.usda.gov/factsheets/Irradiation_and_Food_Safety/index.asp>.

[11] Moss, Michael. “The Burger That Shattered Her Life.” New York Times [New York City ] 03 Oct. 2009: n. pag. The New York Times. Web. 23 Oct. 2011.

Chloe Hawker is a student at Carnegie-Mellon University.  Follow The Triple Helix Online on Twitter and join us on Facebook.

While accountability is a crucial part of environmentalism, this negative focus tends to turn people away and does not produce results that are at a large enough scale to create significant changes. Instead, environmentalism has the potential to be, and in many cases, already is, positive, ambitious, and incredibly creative. We should not pursue environmental goals as a desperate last defense. They should represent a step forward, towards attaining greater efficiency and utility in everything we do. Environmentalism should aid us, not stand in our way, of becoming greater than we have ever been before.

By mimicking nature’s design principles, engineers and scientists are creating products that are perfectly adapted to solve problems we face today. Over billions of years, evolution has driven forms to fit their functions. The silk that spiders secrete to spin their webs is the perfect example. It is capable of withstanding the force of wind, the forces exerted by insects trapped in the web, and more1, thereby facilitating the spider’s unique existence. Many of the needs served by nature’s elegant solutions are shared by us, in the human world. The science of biomimicry aims to imitate nature and yield materials and products that are both more green and better performers than their conventional alternatives. In the future, artificial spider silk could be a component of cars, causing dents created by accidents to spontaneously disappear.2 The possibilities are limitless.

Of all the biomimicry projects undertaken, the creation of the artificial leaf is arguably the most imagined and the most anticipated. The concept behind it is simple. An artificial leaf, like its natural brethren, uses sunlight to decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen.3 Either the energy produced by the process or the resultant hydrogen gas can be used to generate fuel. While burning fuels such as coal and gasoline produces carbon dioxide, the consumption of hydrogen fuel only produces water vapor, a cleaner alternative. Companies such as Toyota have already designed viable hydrogen-fueled cars.4 Until now, however, obtaining inexpensive hydrogen gas has been problematic. With the development of the artificial leaf, the production of hydrogen could become very practical, leading to a larger market for hydrogen-powered vehicles.

At the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in 2010, Dr. Tongxiang Fan and his colleagues at Shanghai Jiotang University introduced a prototype for an Artificial Inorganic Leaf. The design mimics the structures of the natural leaf that are involved in focusing solar energy and guiding it through the parts of the leaf that harvest the energy.4 Titanium dioxide, a hydrogen photocatalyst, or compound capable of stimulating the synthesis of hydrogen gas in the presence of sunlight,5 was introduced into the plant Anemone vitefolia in place of its natural photosynthetic pigments. This compound was able to replicate the structures responsible for light-harvesting in the leaf, and is estimated to be able to produce three times as much hydrogen gas as commercial photo-catalysts available today.  In addition to titanium dioxide, nanoparticles of platinum were embedded into the leaf’s surface, to increase its activity. By “biotemplating” titanium dioxide and platinum within a natural leaf, the scientists aim to use “human ingenuity to modify the principles of natural systems for enhanced utility.”4

In a paper published on September 30, 2011, Dr. Daniel Nocera of MIT revealed that he had taken the idea even further by creating the first practical artificial leaf. While the leaf designed by Dr. Fan’s team modified an existing organic leaf, this artificial leaf is composed entirely of three inorganic components. The base of the “leaf” is a thin silicon wafer, which converts sunlight into an electric current, much like a solar cell.6 This electric current also results in the production of “holes” or electron vacancies that travel through the system. These holes use the second component of the artificial leaf, a cobalt-based catalyst, to strip electrons off water molecules, decomposing water into hydrogen and oxygen.7 Oxygen is released out of the side of the wafer on which the catalyst is bound. The other side of the wafer contains a nickel-molybdenum-zinc alloy, which releases hydrogen gas through the other side. These reactions can occur when the artificial leaf is placed in a glass of ordinary water.6 In order to harness the energy produced, a barrier can be constructed separating the two sides of the cell, so that hydrogen ions can stream into one side and oxygen ions the other. Therefore, hydrogen and oxygen can be stored separately, and recombined to generate electricity in a fuel cell.7 While the splitting of a molecule of water is an endothermic reaction that requires energy, the synthesis of water is an exothermic reaction, which releases energy for us to use.

In nature, sunlight absorbed by a leaf results in the photoexcitation of electrons, which leave behind regions of electron vacancies, the holes. These holes are then captured by the oxygen evolving complex to oxidize water and reduce nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) into nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide hydride (NADH). Nocera’s artificial leaf uses the cobalt-oxygen evolving catalyst as a functional model of a leaf’s photosystem II10 , thereby mimicking photosynthesis. Similarly, the recombination of hydrogen and oxygen in a fuel cell can be compared to respiration, where the flow of hydrogen ions down their electrochemical gradient results in both the release of energy and the formation of water.

The most amazing aspect of Nocera’s artificial leaf is how practical it is. The leaf is only made of non-corrosive, earth-abundant materials, such as silicon and cobalt. Furthermore, it is about the size of a poker card,9 lightweight, and requires no wires or external circuits. In the laboratory, the artificial leaf has been able to generate power continuously for 45 hours without a drop in performance, partially due to the self-healing nature of the cobalt catalyst, which reforms its cobalt oxide clusters whenever they are degraded by the reactions. Not only could the leaf one day combat the threat of global warming; it could also make energy both affordable and accessible. If the technology works the way it is expected to, rural villages in remote areas of developing countries will be able to power their homes with ease, just by placing the artificial leaf in a gallon of water in bright sunlight and connecting the system to a fuel cell. This could result in dramatic transformations. Easy access to electricity gives rise to an increased standards of living, as well as access to information through communication devices like cell phones and computers.

Nocera and the Tata group, an Indian multinational conglomerate, have signed an agreement aimed at commercialization.10 Nevertheless, the question of whether the artificial leaf can be useful still remains. An analysis commissioned by the US Department of Energy has determined that the leaf is capable of producing solar hydrogen at a lower cost than an array of photovoltaic panels connected to catalyst-coated electrodes.11,12 Therefore, the main challenge facing the artificial leaf is not the cost or feasibility of production, but instead, how efficiently the system can use solar energy, while keeping costs low. The artificial leaf is more efficient than a natural leaf, which only converts 1% of the sunlight it receives into energy, but not by much. Nocera reports an efficiency of 2.5% without wires and 4.7% with wires.12 Commercial solar panels, on the other hand, display efficiencies upwards of 10%.5 The semiconducting solar cell, not the catalysts, are responsible for most of the energy loss, and in order for Nocera’s catalysts to have any impact in terms of photoelectrical hydrogen production, better semi-conductors must be used. However, better semi-conductors are expensive and will significantly drive up the cost of producing the artificial leaf. Currently, Nocera’s team is testing a higher quality crystalline silicon for the semiconductor. They also plan on improving efficiency by increasing the conductance of the surrounding solution and punching small holes in the semi-conductor to facilitate proton flow.12 Without a great increase in efficiency that brings the number reported into the teens, the artificial leaf will never be able to meet the needs of an American home, though it might be able to power energy-light homes in third-world countries.

Systems to collect, store, and use both the oxygen and the hydrogen gas produced by the artificial remain to be developed,5 indicating that the technology is only in its infancy. However, both Nocera and Fan’s artificial leaves are tangible steps in the right direction, and could lead us into a bold new age. One where there are no soaring gas prices. One where we can save nature by paying her the greatest complement: imitation.

References:

1. M. Baels, L. Gross, and S. Harrell, “SPIDER SILK: STRESS-STRAIN CURVES AND YOUNG’S MODULUS,” Tiem, last modified 1999, http://www.tiem.utk.edu/~gross/bioed/bealsmodules/spider.html.
2. Brian Handwerk, “Artificial Spider Silk Could Be Used for Armor, More,” National Geographic, January 14, 2005, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0114_050114_tv_spider.html
3. American Chemical Society, “Blueprint for ‘artificial leaf’ mimics Mother Nature,” ScienceDaily, March 25, 2010, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100325131549.htm
4. Darren Quick, “Drawing Inspiration from Mother Nature in Designing an ‘Artifical Leaf,” Gizmag, March 26, 2010, http://www.gizmag.com/artificial-leaf-blueprint/14630/
5. David L. Chandler, “‘Artificial leaf’ makes fuel from sunlight,” MIT news, September 30, 2011, http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/artificial-leaf-0930.html
6. ScienceNow, “Artificial Leaf Moves Two Steps Closer to Reality,” Wired, September 30, 2011, http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/artificial-leaf-solar-fuel/
7. Dinca, Mircea, Yogesh Surendranath, and Daniel G. Nocera. “Nickel-borate oxygen-evolving catalyst that functions under benign conditions.” PNAS 107, no. 23 (June 2010): 10337.
8. Daniel G. Nocera and Matthew W. Kanan, “In Situ Formation of an Oxygen-Evolving Catalyst in Neutral Water Containing Phosphate and Co2+.” Science , August 22, 2008.
9. Ben Coxworth, “Scientists unveil ‘world’s first practical artificial leaf,” gizmag, March 28, 2011, http://www.gizmag.com/worlds-first-practical-artificial-leaf/18247/
10. Admin. “MIT’s Daniel Nocera Announces Artificial Leaf With Goal To Make Every Home a Power Station, Signs with Tata.” Free Energy Times, March 28, 2011.
11. James, Brian D., George N. Baum, Julie Perez, and Kevin N. Baum. Technoeconomic Analysis of Photoelectrochemical (PEC) Hydrogen Production. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/pec_technoeconomic_analysis.pdf
12. Noorden, Richard Van. “Secrets of artificial leaf revealed.” Nature News, September 29, 2011. http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110929/full/news.2011.564.html
13. Image: EMSL. “Molecules Frozen Stiff.” Flickr, December 3, 2010. http://www.flickr.com/photos/emsl/5416820160/
14. Image: Yikrazuul. “Manganese cluster.” Wikimedia Commons, May 15, 2009. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Manganese_cluster.svg

Prathima Radhakrishnan is a second year student from the University of Chicago majoring in the biological sciences and biochemistry and minoring in creative writing. Follow The Triple Helix Online on Twitter and join us on Facebook.

While willpower has long intrigued psychologists, groundbreaking research in recent years has changed our basic understanding of it. Psychologists now say that willpower depends on a limited but replaceable source of energy.1 According to this idea, known as ego depletion, our willpower becomes drained as we work through demanding tasks and decisions. This new understanding of willpower comes at a time when technology is redefining our experience of willpower.

Closely related to ego depletion is decision fatigue – the idea that we make poor decisions when willpower runs low. The effects of decision fatigue can be startling. A well-known study of parole appeals found that prisoners’ chances of gaining parole fluctuated wildly over the course of the day.2 At the beginning of the day, judges granted parole to prisoners 65 percent of the time. Several hours later they granted parole to only about 10 percent of prisoners. The rate shot back up to 65 percent right after lunch and dinner breaks.

This unnerving pattern can be explained by glucose concentrations in the brain. Researchers suggest that willpower relies on glucose as a limited energy source, rising and falling with glucose levels.3 The judges were receiving a burst of glucose from meals, but the mental work of analyzing case after case gradually depleted their reserves. Similar effects have been witnessed in many psychological experiments. In one experiment, subjects drank regular or diet lemonade and then performed a decision task.4 The people who drank sugar-free lemonade were much more likely to make impulsive decisions. Because of lower glucose levels, they displayed a diminished ability to engage in effortful decision-making processes.

Experiments like this have led some psychologists to describe glucose as a sort of brain fuel for willpower. While this biochemical account of willpower appeals to us for its reductionist explanation, it carries unsettling implications. It seems to absolve us of blame for lapses in self-control. Is it really my fault if I fail to resist delicious cupcakes, or do something worse?

Perhaps it is. Recent experiments indicate that cognition heavily influences willpower. Specifically, our beliefs about willpower – whether we conceive of it as biologically limited or not – immensely influence our self-control.5 Researchers at Stanford University examined people’s beliefs about willpower prior to subjecting them to a battery of self-regulation tasks. People who viewed willpower as biologically limited displayed substantially less self-control than those who viewed willpower otherwise. The phenomenon extended outside of laboratory experiments to long-term behaviors like dieting. The researchers assert that ego depletion depends on our implicit theories of willpower, rather than glucose concentration. While these results do not necessarily conflict with the limited energy model, they demonstrate that willpower cannot be reduced to mere glucose concentrations.

While the scientific understanding of willpower expands, our daily experience of it continues to evolve. We have to exercise self-control in response to new stimuli. We grapple with tempting influences like YouTube that did not exist prior to the Web. Willpower is after all a relatively modern notion: Google’s Ngram viewer shows that use of the word took off starting around 1960.6 YouTube, along with companies like Facebook and Amazon, continue to expand rapidly. YouTube now streams over four billion videos every day.7

YouTube targets users’ willpower through its advertising and content presentation. Much like a supermarket, YouTube’s interface barrages users with choice. Go to a typical video page and there are nearly 30 links to promoted and related videos. Finish watching a video and the screen flutters with 12 more links. The temptation to watch additional video and sheer amount of choice facilitate ego depletion and decision fatigue. Ego depletion makes it harder to leave the website and attend to other priorities.

Companies and marketers have a strong incentive to present their advertising and content in ways that weaken their audience’s willpower. But media sites like YouTube are uniquely positioned to target their users’ willpower – the amount of choice they present is virtually unlimited. While the typical supermarket carries around 50,000 distinct products,8 the presentation of choice remains limited by physical factors. YouTube, on the other hand, can create dynamic and interactive experiences that target users’ willpower more selectively. Personalized content is huge here. YouTube and many other websites harness personal data to tailor content to our interests. Personalized content is more tempting than plain content and more effectively challenges our self-control.

Willpower remains an elusive animal. And expanding access to YouTube and other technologies continue to reshape our everyday experience of willpower. But research in the last several years has greatly developed our understanding of willpower, enabling us to get a better sense of our impulses. Can future findings reconcile the limited energy model with the evidence that willpower stems from cognition? Should we regard willpower as something controlled by brain chemistry or shaped by mindset? In any case, our experience of willpower will continue to evolve with technological change – and so will our scientific understanding.

References

1. Gailliot, Matthew T., and Roy F. Baumeister. “The Physiology of Willpower: Linking Blood Glucose to Self-Control.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 11 no. 4 (2007): 303-27.
2. Danziger, Shai, Jonathan Levav, and Liora Avnaim-Pesso. “Extraneous Factors in Judicial Decisions.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 no. 17 (2011): 6889-92.
3. Gailliot, Matthew T., Roy F. Baumeister, C. Nathan DeWall, Jon K. Maner, E. Ashby Plant, Dianne M. Tice, Lauren E. Brewer, and Brandon J. Schmeichel. “Self-Control Relies on Glucose as a Limited Energy Source: Willpower Is More Than a Metaphor.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92 no. 2 (2007): 325-36.
4. Masicampo, E.J., Roy F. Baumesiter. “Toward a Physiology of Dual-Process Reasoning and Judgment: Lemonade, Willpower, and Expensive Rule-Based Analysis.” Psychological Science 19 no. 3 (2008): 255-60.
5. Job, Veronika, Carol S. Dweck, and Gregory M. Walton. “Ego Depletion—Is It All in Your Head?” Psychological Science 21 no. 11 (2010): 1686-93.
6. Google Ngram Viewer. Accessed February 2, 2012. http://books.google.com/ngram
7. Oreskovic, Alexei. “YouTube hits 4 billion daily views.” January 23, 2012. Accessed February 1, 2010. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/23/us-google-youtube-idUSTRE80M0TS20120123
8. “Supermarket Facts.” Food Marketing Institute. Accessed January 24, 2012. http://www.fmi.org/facts_figs/?fuseaction=superfact
9. “Just Another Computer Addict.” Flickr. February 2, 2010. Accessed February 14, 2012. http://www.flickr.com/photos/peter-repeater/4325173849/
10. “What Makes Apple Apple. Digital image.” Flickr. December 22, 2011. Accessed February 14, 2012. http://www.flickr.com/photos/opensourceway/6555465931/in/photostream

Michael Begun is a second-year student at the University of Chicago majoring in computer science and minoring in linguistics. Follow The Triple Helix Online on Twitter and join us on Facebook.

Source: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It is difficult for young people today to imagine a time without text messaging and internet surfing. The current generation of college students in particular have literally grown up with the internet, and are often more technologically literate than their parents and professors. Studies have shown that young people’s frequent use of the internet affected their brain development,1 a finding that gives rise to the question of how education today is affected by students’ different ways of thinking and studying.  Furthermore, are the internet-minded students at an advantage or disadvantage regarding their education and their ability to retain what is taught? The answer appears to be two-sided: while too much use of the internet can lead to addiction and shorter attention spans, it has also been shown that being internet-minded gives people the potential to learn even more. Of course, for that to happen, it is necessary to have educational systems that embrace how young people think today, and cater to their particular needs.

Few would argue against the internet being a revolutionary force that has changed society significantly in the past few decades, but surprisingly little research has actually been done on how it is affecting our brains and the way people think.2 Researcher Betsy Sparrow of Columbia University is one of the few who has looked at the internet’s effect on cognition. She found that people were much less likely to remember particular facts if they believed that the information would be accessible to them in the future.3 When presented with random facts, participants in the study who believed the information would be lost after they read it scored much higher on the quizzes that asked them to recall the facts than those participants who thought they could access the information later. Interestingly, she also found that most people immediately turn to the internet when they are presented with a question to which they don’t know the answer.2 Furthermore, she noticed that people prioritize remembering where certain information can be found over the information itself.3 In an interview for Columbia University, Sparrow explained that the internet has become today’s primary source of transactive memory, or memory that uses external sources to store and to retrieve information.2 The idea of transactive memory is nothing new; how many times have we not bothered to memorize a certain recipe because we knew we could simply ask our mothers when we needed it? Today, it is the other way around- individuals first turn to the internet, then consult others, so the former reduces people’s need to remember details by always serving as a go-to source for our questions.2 One implication that Sparrow’s research has on students therefore is that they might not be as detail oriented in their studying. However, as Sparrow also notes, not being burdened with details but instead forming the bigger picture gives people the capacity to learn so much more, and has the potential to make humans smarter on the whole.

Other studies have enlightened us of the more negative effects of the internet on cognition and learning. Two recent articles by the NYT discuss how constant stimulation by email, text messages, and online video games create a profound obstacle to the focus and productivity of both young people and adults.1 Furthermore, young people are particularly disadvantaged by the technology because their growing minds are more susceptible to developing a short attention span in response to the stimuli. Even without the internet as a distraction, many young people struggle as is to manage time wisely and resist impulsive behavior. The concern is that the younger generations will be ‘wired’ differently than the older generations, and that they will be at a disadvantage. For example, the idea of “internet addiction” has been increasingly discussed in psychiatry as a growing issue.4 Constant stimulation, perceived as exciting, can trigger dopamine release in the brain, without which one might begin to feel bored. In this way, a person might come to seek distractions via the internet.5

With different studies highlighting both the positive and the negative ways that the internet affects cognition, the relevant question becomes whether the internet spells doom or success for today’s students. Some believe that it is not a question of internet use, but a question of teaching methods.6 It is clear that the students of today and their baby-boomer generation professors grew up in very different academic environments, disconnecting them. For example, the average college student today has grown up in an environment of constant stimulation, leading them to process information in a very different way than older graduates. Yet, the format of most college classes has changed very little in the past few decades. Lectures and long reading assignments, both still common, may be more challenging to today’s student because they are not as interactive and stimulating.6 However, many educational institutions are making an effort to make the format of homework and lectures relevant to the internet minded student of today. A greater emphasis on multimedia and kinesthetic experiences, group projects or online collaborations, and also learning management systems (such as Blackboard used at the University of Chicago) are all ways in which universities are trying to incorporate the internet and create new types of learning more suited to today’s students.6 It has been proven repeatedly that when students are engaged and stimulated in a way they find interesting, the results can be impressive.1 This is why it can often be the case that the same students who struggle to remain focused during a long reading assignment can easily spend hours building a website or editing a video project for a class; those kinds of interactive assignments appeal to young people, and also allow the students to instantly see the products of their work, generating the same instant gratification- which is what makes video games appealing.1

With the rapidly evolving nature of the internet and technology associated with it, it is difficult to tell what the future will bring. It is possible that the problem might fix itself as the students of today become the professors of tomorrow; alternatively, new inventions might bring more challenges in educating generations who have grown up influenced by different technology. Whatever the case may be, it is clear that knowing the effects of influential technology on cognition is key if education is to achieve its maximal level of success with each generation.

References:

1. Richtel, Matt. “Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction.” New York Times. Nov. 21, 2010. URL.
2. Sparrow, Betsy. Columbia University. Interview, 3:08. July 14, 2011. URL.
3. Sparrow, Betsy et al. “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips.” SCIENCE, 333 (2011): 776-778. URL.
4. Block, Jerald J. “Issues for DSM-V: Internet Addiction.” American Journal of Psychiatry, 156, no 3. (2008): 306-307. URL.
5. Richtel, Matt. “Attached to Technology and Paying a Price.” New York Times. June 6, 2010. URL.
6. Baker, Russell, Erika Matulich, and Raymond Papp. “Teach Me In the Way I Learn: Education and the Internet Generation,” Journal of College Teaching and Learning, 4, no. 4 (2007): 27-32. URL.
7. Miles, Stuart. “Child Working on Computer” (2011). FreeDigitalPhotos.net. URL.

Fili Bogdanic is a second-year student at the University of Chicago majoring in Biology and minoring in English. Follow The Triple Helix Online on Twitter and join us on Facebook.

Harnessing the Cognitive Surplus

By James Scott-Brown

How do you spend your free time? If you were an average American, you would spend 20 hours a week watching television, and another 3 hours playing games [1]. Clay Shirky has written about how, after the Second World War, enormous changes in society occurred, so that “society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before–free time”, creating a vast “cognitive surplus” [2]. How can this surplus be effectively exploited? One approach is to take advantage of people’s leisure time and enjoyment of computer games to solve real problems, by creating games in which players complete tasks that computers cannot yet. This has been done for the problems of image tagging (the ESP Game/Google Image Labeler), locating objects in images (Peekaboom), collecting common-sense facts (Verbosity), predicting protein folding (Foldit) and improving the design of electronic circuits (funSAT). Alternatively, mundane but essential tasks can be modified to have useful side-effects (reCAPTCHA).

The work of Luis von Ahn is a good example of harnessing the human “cognitive surplus” using both approaches. He began by developing the CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), which distinguishes humans from computers by asking them to complete a task, usually typing letters from a distorted image. This allows websites to prevent computer programs from automatically creating multiple accounts, sending large numbers of spam messages, or making many attempts to guess a user’s password. The initial paper describing CAPTCHA suggested that, as well as helping to distinguish between computers and humans, the tests could encourage work on improved text recognition algorithms, jokingly saying that this was ‘how lazy cryptographers do AI’; however, the time humans spent completing them was wasted [3]. A subsequent refinement, reCAPTCHA, uses the process of completing a CAPTCHA to decipher words in scanned documents that are too distorted or smudged to be recognised by a computer [4]. This is done by present- ing the user with images of two words simultaneously: an “unknown word”, and a known “control” word selected randomly from a list of more than 100,000. If a user types the control word correctly, they are assumed to be human, and their attempt at typing the unknown word is recorded. Once three people have provided the same response to the “unknown word” image, they are assumed to be correct, and their transcription is added to the list of control words. Thus, the number of transcribed words increases as reCAPTCHAs are completed. reCAPTCHA has been an enormous success: by September 2008, it was being used by more than 40,000 websites, and had transcribed over 440 million words [5].

Von Ahm has also developed a series of what he calls “Games With a Purpose” (GWAP) [6,7]. Several of them award points for agreeing with other players: in the ESP Game and popVideo, a group of players see the same image or video, and must submit keywords that could describe it; in Matchin, players are presented with a pair of images, and asked which one they prefer; in Squigl, players are shown an image and must draw an outline around a named object. Others rely on describing an object to a partner, and understanding their description: in TagTune, players describe what they hear to their partner and, based upon each other’s descriptions, guess whether they are listening to the same tune; in Verbosity one player has to describe a word by what it “is” – “is a type of”, “looks like”, “is about the same size as”, “is the opposite of” and “is a kind of” – while the other has to guess what it is [8]. By collecting human responses to questions, these games teach the computer specific facts, either about the meaning of words (Verbosity) or about particular images, videos, or pieces of music. All of them are useful in some way: tagging media with keywords allows search engines to produce more relevant results; the facts collected by Verbosity may be useful for Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing projects; and by rating how attractive images are, Matchin could lead to computer systems that select the prettiest images to present to users.

The main reason that these games are fun is that players must try to guess what other players are thinking. In the ESP game, for example, users are told which of their suggested tags matched those of their partner, which can influence their future suggestions. By adding this social interaction, boring tasks like tagging images or music are made fun. Additionally, users are actively encouraged to refer their friends to the site by bonus points. The competitive element extends beyond recruiting friends, as at the end of each game, players are told how many more points they need to match the day’s high-score, encouraging them to start another game. Players who receive specific numbers of points are awarded skill levels, and those with the highest scores appear on a leaderboard. During a game, continual encouragement to play on is provided by a sound playing (and, in some games, motivating text appearing) whenever a match occurs. Fixed time limits for each game maintain interest, forcing players to think quickly, so that the games are more challenging – and hence fun. One player apparently claimed that the ESP game was “like crack”: arguably, with its flashing lights and beeping noises, the game has more in common with a casino [9].

Both reCAPTCHA and the GWAP games are very easy to learn – it takes just seconds to read and understand the rules – which has surely contributed to their success. However, such simplicity is not essential, and many players have been attracted to the much more complicated game Foldit, in which players attempt to manipulate predicted proteins structure to produce more likely (i.e. lower energy) structures. Since it is not immediately obvious how to interpret or alter the protein structures, help is provided by a series of in-game tutorials. A separate wiki explains the relevant biochemistry, in-game controls and strategies [10]. Most of the top players in sheets). Players can thus produce better predictions of protein structures, which are important not only to the understanding of basic biological processes, but also to the rational design of drugs targeting specific proteins in disease.

So why do people choose to play these games? Perhaps they are enticed by invitations to “contribute to science” (Foldit) or claims that “You’re helping the world become a better place . . . you’re training computers to solve problems for humans all over the world” (GWAP) ‐ which the games do fulfill. When Foldit players were asked their motivation for playing, about 40% of answers referred to the scientific purpose of Foldit; 35% to a feeling of immersion in a task; 20% to a feeling of achievement; and the remainder to social involvement in the game [11]. Players of the more casual GWAP games are likely to be motivated less by the higher purpose of the games, and more by a sense of fun and com‐ petitiveness. Together, GWAP and Foldit have shown that people can be persuaded to perform useful tasks that cannot be automated, by presenting them in the context of a game, with rules, goals, and scores. In this way, otherwise idle minds can achieve what computers cannot.

References

1.US Bureau of Labor Statistics American Time Use Survey 2009, Tables A-2 and 11

2. Clay Shirky. Gin, Television, and Social Surplus. Talk given by Clay Shirky at the Web 2.0 conference, 2008 Apr 23. Transcript available from: http://www. herecomeseverybody.org/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html

2. reCAPTCHA: Stop Spam, Read Books [Online Homepage]. http://www. google.com/recaptcha

3. Von Ahn et al. CAPTCHA: Using Hard AI Problems For Security. Proceedings of Eurocrypt 2003; 2656:294-311

4. reCAPTCHA: Stop Spam, Read Books. http://www.google.com/recaptcha

5. Von Ahn et al. reCAPTCHA: human-based character recognition via Web security measures. Science 2008; 321(5895):1465-8.

6. Gwap.com [Online Homepage]. Available from: http://gwap.com

7. Von Ahn and Dabbish. Designing Games With a Purpose. Communications of the ACM 2008; 51(8):58-67

8. This is similar to Burgener’s 20Q game, in which users train a neural network, so that it is able to distinguish between objects by asking fewer than 20 questions. 20Q.net Inc. [Online Homepage] http://20q.net

9. Thompson, Clive. For Certain Tasks, the Cortex Still Beats the CPU. Wired Magazine. Issue 15.07. Accessible from: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/ magazine/15- 07/ff_humancomp

10. Foldit wiki. [Online Homepage] http://foldit.wikia.com/wiki/FoldIt_Wiki

11. Cooper et al. “Predicting protein structures with a multiplayer online game.” Nature 466(7307):756. Supplementary Figure 3 shows the biochemical experience of players; Supplementary Figure 4 shows motivations for playing the game

12. CASP8 Results. Available from: http://fold.it/portal/node/729520

This article was originally published in The Science in Society Review at the University of Cambridge by The Triple Helix Inc. Follow The Triple Helix Online on Twitter and join us on Facebook

Carbon in the form of atom-thick "chicken-wire" sheets called graphene has the capacity to replace silicon circuitry.

As long as Moore’s Law holds true, every two years, computers will grow either twice as powerful or half the size. This trend, in which the number of transistors that can fit on an integrated circuit doubles every two years, has continued since the 1950′s and is forecast to continue for another decade. However, with the limits of silicon circuitry rapidly approaching the limits of manufacturing, some new material needs to take the place of silicon in order for Moore’s Law to continue. Carbon in the form of atom-thick “chicken-wire” sheets called graphene has the capacity to fulfill this role. It conducts electricity with very little resistance or heat generation at room temperature, consuming less power than silicon while allowing for high throughput. Though graphene-based circuitry is in its infancy, it holds tremendous promise as manufacturing processes continuously improve and new techniques emerge.

The limitations of silicon have been studied extensively, especially since the turn of the new millennium when silicon chips started to encounter performance issues. Silicon is used in transistors, which act like switches in circuit-boards, changing the way current flows by opening or closing a gate through an applied electric field. As the size of the silicon transistor shrinks, the resistance to current flow increases, so more power is consumed and more heat is generated. The major contributors to this effect are tunneling currents, which can pass through the gate even if it’s closed, while the increased heat promotes thermally generated sub-threshold currents, which leak in a similar way [1]. Until recently, fabrication methods have been changed and the size of the silicon elements could shrink without reducing their overall performance. However, silicon’s limits are becoming more apparent as everyday computing technologies progress. In order to develop a very small integrated circuit-board that is also powerful enough to do computing tasks quickly, like something found in the latest smart-phones, it will be necessary to develop some way to dissipate the extra heat, and to have an adequate, portable power supply to deal with the effects of shrinking the chip.

Graphene seems to be a viable successor to silicon because it can overcome the challenges that silicon faces as computer chips shrink. It was first “discovered” in 2004 in the form of “exfoliated” flakes that could be derived from graphite. It was well-known that graphite is a form of carbon where all the atoms are arranged in sheets and all the layers are loosely interconnected, but it was believed that none of these layers could be chemically separated without them decomposing into smaller fragments of carbon. For this reason, the carbon-sheet model was kept as a toy model for materials physicists [2]. However, when it was discovered that the layers of graphite could be successfully separated micro-mechanically while remaining stable in the form of atom-thick sheets [2], interest in graphene rekindled and soon roared to life.

The interest in graphene stemmed from its unique electronic properties. One of the most striking properties is that current is conducted through the monolayer with remarkably little resistance, even at room temperature. This arises from the way that electrons behave within the hexagonal grid that makes up graphene. When modeled, the behavior of the electrons more closely resembles particles called massless Dirac fermions, which can be thought of as electrons that lost their resting mass, or as neutrinos that gained an electron’s charge [2]. This behavior leads to virtually resistance-free flow of charge through graphene, making it very appealing for the manufacture of electronic devices. Moreover, the way that graphene conducts electricity depends on how large the sheet or ribbon of graphene is: if the ribbon is wider than a micron, it acts as a good conductor, and if the ribbon is thinner, it has the properties of a semi-conductor like silicon [3]. This is useful for potential electronics because it reduces the pileup of electrons that occur at the junction between the conducting and semiconducting material in traditional circuit boards [3], further decreasing the resistance in the chip as a whole.

Another property that makes graphene very promising for use in transistors is its capacity for ballistic computing. Ballistic computing puts forward a new design for transistors that allow them to function more rapidly and effectively and with fewer “leaking” currents than traditional transistors.

This revolves around a new design for the transistor gates themselves. The traditional design for transistors used in integrated circuitry is basically an electron basin with a metal gate: halting the flow fills the basin, designating a 1, while allowing charge to flow empties the basin, signaling 0. This introduces a delay to each operation, as the basin needs time to fill and empty to transmit the appropriate signal. Ballistic transistors offer an increase in the speed and efficiency by removing the need for halting the flow of electrons, instead using their inertia for “free” sorting into 0′s and 1′s [4]. The mechanism involves placing a wedge into the flow of electrons that would separate the flow into one of two directions, each designating either “1″ or “0.” The direction of the flow is determined by an electric field upstream from the wedge that pushes the electrons slightly to one side or another [4]. The benefit of this setup is that very little energy is actually required to divert the flow from 1 to 0 or vice-versa, and since the flow is never halted, it can work at terahertz frequencies, which current transistors struggle to achieve [4]. While silicon sheets could work in this application, graphene’s pure crystal structure and high current capacity (while maintaining favorable electronic effects at room temperature) make it a better option [2].

The biggest hurdle for graphene electronics is adapting it to industrial processes. The exfoliated graphene flakes are irregular in shape and have rough edges. These are acceptable for research purposes, but regular and easily replicable shapes are necessary for industrialized processes because rough edges have a tendency to scatter the flow of electrons, introducing additional resistance to the system [2].

Recent developments have led to new ways of making variable sizes and shapes of graphene, which can be scaled to industrial proportions. The Golovchenko group at Harvard recently published a method that applied vaporized carbon to a nickel substrate where it forms a layer of variable thickness depending on the duration the vapor is present. Once the nickel cools, the carbon does not adhere to the crystalline structure and sizeable sheets of a uniform, determinate thickness are produced [5]. Walt de Heer’s group at Georgia Tech came up with a similar process, using etched silicon as the substrate. The carbon adheres to the surfaces etched into the silicon to generate graphene ribbons of a specific size with smooth edges, without any need for cutting procedures like the other methods to-date [3]. The use of silicon as a substrate also makes the process somewhat friendlier to industrialization, since most factories already have machinery for processing silicon.

Graphene holds a lot of promise for the future of electronics. Its electronic properties make it an ideal replacement for silicon as it reaches the limits of production. Graphene’s implementation in traditional and experimental electronic devices will result in electronics with smaller sizes and greater computing power. However, silicon will always remain an inexpensive and reliable material for circuitry, whereas graphene currently stands as a relatively expensive high-performance material. Eventually the industry will shift towards an all-graphene production as its price and ease-of manufacture approaches that of silicon, but this change will require a dramatic paradigm shift because the two technologies cannot be combined effectively. However, by the time Moore’s Law drives silicon to its physical limits, graphene circuitry will ideally be mature enough to extend the boundaries of computing possibilities.

References:

1. Wong PH. Device Scaling Limits of Si MOSFETs and Their Application Dependencies. Proceedings of the IEEE. 2001; 89(3):259-88.
2. Geim AK, Novoselov KS. The Rise of Graphene. Nature Materials. 2007; 6:183-99.
3. De Heer WA.  Scalable Templated Growth of Graphene Nanoribbons on SiC. Nature Nanotechnology. 2010; 5:727-31.
4. Sherwood J. Radical ‘Ballistic Computing’ Chip Bounces Electrons Like Billiards. Univ. of Rochester News. 2006 Aug 16. Available at: http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=2585.
5. Golovchenko JA, Hubbard W, Garaj S. Graphene Synthesis by Ion Implantation. Applied Physics Letters. 2010; 97:183-5.
6. Image: AlexanderAIUS. Graphen. Wikimedia Commons; [uploaded 2010 Aug 26; cited 2011 Apr 28] Available at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graphen.jpg [Licensed under CC BY-SA]

Aleks Penev is a second-year biology and computer science major at the University of Chicago.

In some ways, this sort of wireless power technology has been “breaking into the market” for some time now.  Inductive charging stations have been sold as an elegant replacement for the clutter of wires that recharge your many electronic devices.  These nifty stations usually come in the form of a pad or some other flat surface, that inductively transmits power to receivers connected to your gadgets.  Using similar technology, Sony and Haier have recently unveiled LCD television models that are “completely wireless.”  While this does, technically, qualify as “wireless power,” the power transfer doesn’t take place over appreciable distances, which limits the number of applications for inductive power transfer.  Though we have found new and interesting ways to power our electronics, freeing us from the power cables that once leashed us to outlets, the true importance of the concept of wireless power comes not in its low grade commercial applications, but on a much larger scale – a global scale.

Microwave power beaming has emerged in the past 50 years as a viable method for power transmission [1]. Recent experiments have proven the feasibility of long range power transmission at relatively high efficiencies.  The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) experiment at Goldstone in 1975 sent 34,000 watts of power across a distance of 1.5 km at an efficiency of 82% [2]. A similar project was conducted in 2008 in which power was sent over 92 miles, albeit at a lower efficiency level.  Both of these experiments used relatively low microwave frequencies, which require larger receivers and have lower transmission efficiency than higher frequencies.  Researchers at Georgia Tech are currently exploring this technology for military and commercial applications under the guidance of Professor Narayanan Komerath.  The team believes greater efficiency and transmission distances can be achieved with a higher frequency of around 220 GHz, especially if an appropriate waveguide can be designed for this application, which should cut down on propagation losses. To put that number in perspective, the millimeter wave detection system that is being used for screening in airports now operates in approximately the 24-30 GHz range.

There are certainly some significant challenges to conquer in the implementation of this technology, but the potential applications make investment in its development worthwhile. The United States Army spends millions of dollars just to transport the billions of dollars worth of fuel required to power forward bases in combat zones.  Even worse, combatants in modern wars target fuel sources, rightfully seeing them as a vital component to a successful campaign.  How can we prevent these losses?  We can cut the wires and turn off the generators.  The flexibility of wireless power transmission will allow the Army to reflect energy-bearing microwaves off of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and naval ships and send it to these forward bases.

The Air Force and the Navy can find an even more diverse set of applications for this technology.  A company called LaserMotive has already designed a system to keep UAVs in flight for days at a time by “refueling” them with surface to air power beaming [3]. If we can do this for UAVs, what is to stop us from one day powering helicopters, fighter jets, or even commercial airliners in this manner?

It’s important to look at the military applications first, as the infrastructure for this technology will have to rely on the military sector for construction due to the large amount of venture capital required. Many scientists see this as a necessary first step towards applying these designs to the commercial sector, in the form of a Space Power Grid (SPG).  Space solar power has been a dream of NASA and other groups of scientists for quite a few years now, and many of their designs have real merit.  The constraints lie in the astronomically high cost of lifting satellites into orbit, which is where the military comes in. The strategy laid out by Professor Komerath calls for a three stage deployment over 30 years.

The first stage relies on the military to develop the equipment and infrastructure necessary for power beaming. We can fully expect them to use this power beaming technology for the purposes discussed earlier, and for countless other projects that we cannot foresee at this time.  The second stage will be based around the development of stratospheric platforms that can route power from regional power plants to homes and businesses around the world.  The third and final stage will be the rise of full space solar power.  Utilizing satellite to satellite beaming, the space power grid can ensure 24 hour access to clean solar power anywhere in the world, even at night. It might be an exaggeration to say that this will completely end reliance on fossil fuels, but it certainly will help.

Many of these ideas may seem hundreds of years away from implementation, but in reality, we can expect the beginnings of such a system to come about in the next fifteen year [4, 5]. The National Space Society (NSS) and former Indian Prime Minister Dr. A.P.J. Kalam will be leading a new initiative in Space Solar Power appropriately titled the Kalam-NSS Indian-American Energy Initiative. Former Prime Minister Kalam believes a working system could be in place within fifteen years.

The development of wireless power transfer has almost endless applications, from low grade commercial charging stations to a cheaper, cleaner power source for the whole world.  While the initial investment will be extremely high for the pioneers in this field, the dividends it will return within a decade or two of implementation will be invaluable, both financially and environmentally [6]. If the system envisioned by Prime Minister Kalam and the NSS comes to fruition, the world will owe a great debt to India and the United States for taking this first step towards independence from fossil fuels and power lines.

References:

1. Rouge, Joseph. “Space‐Based Solar Power As an Opportunity for Strategic Security.” National Space Society. National Security Space Office, n.d. Web. 10 Nov 2010. <http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/final-sbsp-interim-assessment-release-01.pdf>.

2. NASA DVD on Space Solar Power: Exploring New Frontiers for Tomorrow. National Aeronautics and Space Administration: 2002, Web. 10 Nov 2010. <http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/NASADVD/part04.htm>.

3. Nugent, T.J., and J.T. Kare. “Laser Power for UAVs: A White Paper.” LaserMotive, LLC, n.d. Web. 10 Nov 2010. <http://lasermotive.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Wireless-Power-for-UAVs-March2010.pdf>.

4. Barnhard, Gary. “National Space Society Announces the Kalam-NSS Energy Initiative.” October 30, 2010.<http://blog.nss.org/?p=2214> (accessed 12/1/2010).

5. Mankins, John. “A Fresh Look at Space Solar Power: New Architectures, Concepts and Technologies.”National Space Society. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, n.d. Web. 10 Nov 2010. <http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/1997-Mankins-FreshLookAtSpaceSolarPower.pdf>.

6. Brown, Trevor. “SSP: A Spherical Architecture.” Space Review n. pag. Web. 10 Nov 2010. <http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1383/1>.

Nicholas Picon is a freshman at Georgia Tech majoring in aerospace engineering.

The Role of Technology

Technology plays a part in these growing trends. Cheating today isn’t as difficult as it once was. Rather, modern cheating methods have become more sophisticated and available for all academic fields. Many students easily find unauthorized resources through the web. Students are often finding homework answers in the form of online study groups or seeking the resource of their peers from social networking sites in order to gain knowledge about previous exams they may have taken. What is astounding is the effort that some people take to convert cheating into a business. A simple search on “academic cheating” on YouTube leads to over 3000 homemade videos on innovative methods of cheating. These short five minute videos are equipped with a title page, credits page, soundtrack, stepwise instructions and demonstrations, all the proper elements of a skillful and informative how-to video. Furthermore, it doesn’t take much effort to discover an online website offering to write your papers for a fee. Just last November, “Ed Dante” came out with an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education claiming to have helped thousands of graduate students by writing their papers, assignments, exams and even doctoral theses [2]. “Ed” claims to have written on even the most specific topics including a doctorate in cognitive psychology. By simply Google-ing his topics, “Ed” was able to teach himself the necessary knowledge needed to complete another student’s work [2].  As technology advances, these dishonest acts continue to increase in magnitude and sophistication.

Cheating: A Time Management Device?

The development of this cheating mentality has deep roots in the academic environments in which potential cheaters find themselves. Based on the Social Learning Theory proposed by Bandura, peer actions serve as strong forms of persuasion [3]. Students observe cheating among their classmates and not only can they mimic their techniques, but also develop the mindset that these practices are accepted. As students observe more events of academic dishonesty, they are progressively more convinced that it is the social norm.

But why are students compelled to cheat in the first place? Today’s college students often don’t need to cheat. Cheating is no longer only employed for basic academic survival. Rather, many students are simply cheating because they are too lazy to put in the effort that the results of cheating so easily provide. Collaborative cheating is a prime model. Not all participants in a study group equally contribute. Instead, it is far more commonplace that in a group of 10 students, only three or so put in the requisite effort to comprehend and analyze the problem at hand in order to complete an assignment. The rest are simply there to reap the benefits of these students’ hard work. Studies have found that students often cheat in “required classes”–classes that student must take in order to graduate [4]. Here, students are simply disinterested in the course’ subject matter and are thus unwilling to put in the effort to learn the material. Cheating is an easy path towards course completion, one that doesn’t require much time and effort. Students rationalize that they can better spend the save time on their major requirements while utilizing cheating as a tool to complete college requirements [5]. When taking courses actually relevant to their majors, students are more typically compelled to complete the work honestly because they are interested in the topics presented and realize that mastery of such material is fundamental to the development of their careers and their major studies.

Is Cheating a Rational Option?

Cheating is considered wrong mainly because it leaves the honest students at a disadvantage. This is one of the greatest ironies about cheating in college. The argument against cheating implicitly states that non-cheaters are the ones left behind. However, this is certainly not true. In fact, a substantial portion of cheaters are those who are disadvantaged. We all know life isn’t fair and education is certainly no exception. All of us grew up in different situations with different educational backgrounds. Some had the privilege of attending the highest ranked high schools in the nation and lived under the motivation of supportive parents. Others attended the only public schools available and dealt with family and personal issues that distracted them from their academic pursuits. When we arrive at college we come with various educational levels, fundamentally different degrees of knowledge that will affect our performance throughout all four years of college. Given these different starting points, some disadvantaged students may be compelled to cheat in order to rise to the same level as privileged students. Cheating may be one of the ways we make up for our disadvantages; it provides us with some control to compensate for the uncontrollable aspects of our lives.

But why are we so compelled to fix our disadvantages in the first place? The main reason lies in the modern world’s competitive atmosphere. The world hosts a lot more people than it once did, and we now know a lot more than we once did. Together these two factors fuel the need for progress. College students are starting to adapt the mentality of the business world [1]. This is expected, as college ultimately serves as preparation for life in the “real world”. The standards of yesterday are no match for those needed today. A perfect 4.0 GPA simply isn’t enough. You need to be active in clubs. Simply joining isn’t an option either, you must exhibit leadership; you must thrive to gain a presidential position. But let’s face it–there is just simply not enough room for all of us to succeed in such positions. Hence, due to competition for coveted positions in law, business, medicine, and other areas, students are under the pressure to succeed; they accomplish this by taking advantage of anything that can possibly give them an edge.  Cheating remains one of the easiest ways to gain that edge.

The Aftermath of Cheating

In nature, cheaters in altruistic social groups often damage the integrity of their species for personal benefit. Likewise, cheating in the academic world damages our society’s progress. Academic dishonesty ultimately minimizes knowledge in a subject matter. Without putting in the effort to complete assignments or write exams, tasks that are designed to help us to approach problems analytically, we fail to fully comprehend the course material. Consequently, when we arrive at similar problems in our careers we will be incapable of completing the task because we never developed the fundamental skills in the first place. Thus, cheating allows unqualified individuals into the career field, a situation that is damaging to our progress.

Many schools have adopted an honor code in an attempt to deter such activity. However, the mere presence of an honor code will not stop cheating; rather, the school must develop a culture that expresses the themes embedded within the code [1]. McCabe and Treviño found that the school with lowest cheating rates actually lacked an honor code [1]. However, on this campus faculty frequently and clearly stated their intolerance of cheating and the serious consequences that may result. Contrary to expectations, the school with the highest cheating rates actually possessed a 100 year long honor code. The difference between the two colleges was simply the implementation of the basis of honor codes. The college with the highest cheating rates did not effectively incorporate the beliefs of the honor code within the student body [1]. Thus, to combat cheating academic communities must be active in expressing the essentials of the honor code through clear discussions of academic dishonesty in courses and swift punishment when students are caught.

Cheating will likely remain embedded within the academic world. As long as grades and admissions remain our biggest priority, this easy approach to success will continue to prevail and will do so with inevitable consequences.

References

[1] Butterfield K, McCabe D, Treviño L. Cheating in Academic Institutions: A Decade of Research. Ethics and Behavior. 2001; 11(3): 219-232.

[2] Dante, Ed. “The Shadow Scholar – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education.”Home – The Chronicle of Higher Education. Web. 04 Mar. 2011. <http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/125329/>.

[3] Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

[4] Carpenter D, Finelli C, Harding T, Mayhew M, Passow H. Factors Influencing Engineering Student’s Decisions To Cheat By Type Of Assessment. Research in Higher Education. 2006; 47(6): 643-684.

[5] Klein H, Levenburg N, McKendall M, Mothersel W. Cheating During the College Years: How do Business School Students Compare? Journal of Business Ethics. 2007; 72: 197-206.

Nancy is a junior at Cornell University. Join The Triple Helix Online on Facebook. Follow The Triple Helix  Online on Twitter.

Social Networks

Terror as Coercion: The Major Stumbling Block in a New Subject for Social Network Analysis

Since the notorious events of September 11^th, 2001, the study of suicide terrorism and the strategic logic behind large-scale acts of extremism has taken off in a variety of disciplines. As readers of the national news, we receive a predominantly qualitative analysis of terrorist cells, how they are organized, recruit and sometimes cooperate. Without reference to a lot of numerical data or statistics and seemingly without the goal of precise and generalizable measurements, news casters present footage of interviews with Iraqis and Americans that get at the “why” of the issue but not exactly the “how.” Qualitative research on terrorism isn’t confined to the realm of media but extends into academia as well. In this context, a large and enlarging body of literature traces the rise and fall of various terrorist campaigns while commenting on the history of terrorism in general. Such studies are extremely beneficial to our understanding of, for instance, the transformation of an ideology into a formidable terrorist organization. However, given that terrorist groups are uniquely decentralized, diffuse, dynamic and constituted by clusters of dense networks that are otherwise isolated or weakly linked to other clusters[1], it is unreasonable to hope that qualitative methods will produce a sufficiently thorough and dependable explanation for how terrorists function or a reliable framework for predicting future terrorist attacks. Qualitative research, which requires a considerable amount of time to execute under the best of circumstances cannot fully and quickly address the “how” of terrorism and when it comes to the systematic use of terror, time is of the essence. A much more practical approach is that of social network analysis—a set of techniques, theories, models and applications that have proven themselves remarkably valuable to the studies of interaction, interdependency, sustained and truncated relational ties, opportunities for and constraints upon individual action, and structures of the social, economic and political sort.

Social network analysis conceives of relationships, contacts, affiliations, friendships and other web-like structures in terms of “nodes” and “edges,” best defined by the below graphic[2]:

In this example, which depicts a pattern of email communication among employees of Hewlett Packard, the nodes (red dots) represent the individual employees and the edges (gray lines) between them represent their email exchanges. It is easy to see how we might map a terrorist network in this way, allowing nodes to represent terrorist suspects and edges instances contact between them. It is also easy to see how the resulting graph would aid our understanding of how terrorist organizations operate and solve problems, as well as how disaggregated (or centralized!) they really are.

In addition to possessing the attributes described above, the study of terrorism also lends itself to social or dynamic network analysis since it is associated with massive volumes of information that need to be synthesized and disseminated in an efficient way. According to Patrick Keefe, when still engaged in wiretapping, the National Security Agency intercepted some 650 million communications on a daily basis. Furthermore, the National Counterterrorism Center’s database of suspected terrorists currently contains over 325,000 names.[3] Network analysis can help to make sense of this wealth of data by giving it a form and shape that can be more easily appreciated than an interminable list of names and dates.

However, in light of these statistics and intimidatingly large numbers, it is no surprise that productive network analysis is often hindered by an overabundance of information, the bulk of which is frequently extraneous and of limited relevance. Valdis Krebs, the first person to diagram the network of terrorist cells associated with the 9/11 hijackings, notes that the nodes (people, potential terrorists) present in the existing body of information often have “fuzzy boundaries” between them, making it difficult to determine who and who not to include in the mapping of a particular terrorist network.[4] False leads are inevitable but not always immediately apparent and therefore represent a debilitating time waster.[5] The question is, then, how can this profusion of information be gathered, managed and propagated in an efficient way? Assuming we can surmount some major roadblocks—such as this baffling quantity of data—the answer may be contained in the relatively new but burgeoning field of social network analysis.

The Next Generation of the Web: Semantics

As many readers of this article will already know, as the number of pages grows in the World Wide Web, so do the number of search engines, portals and directories, all of which are designed to facilitate the location of useful information. Indeed, much of the information amassed and used by government officials has its origins in the Internet. So what if there was a way to organize and integrate all of this feedback into a single model while also selectively removing unusable or worthless data?  This may in fact be feasible through a tool called the Semantic Web, a group of methods and technologies that allows users to build vocabularies or “ontologies” that enrich data with additional meaning and therefore increase opportunities for effective use of said data.[6] Put succinctly, the purpose of the Semantic Web—an intelligent technique for information categorization, extraction and search—is to make the Web “smarter” and better able to perform useful services for users by adding semantic annotation to Web documents and other resources so that knowledge, rather than unstructured material, is consistently accessed. Through Semantic Web methods and technologies, machines can understand the semantics, the meaning of information, text and data and subsequently create connections for those who take advantage of it, thereby relieving them (at least partially) of the laborious task of consolidating and making sense of various bits and pieces of dispersed information.

Traditional Web portals, those with which the average Internet user is most familiar, are websites that collect information and links to pages and usually operate around a specific theme or topic. Semantic Web portals instead “collect URIs of files on the Semantic Web, and allow users to interact with…statements,” statements being carefully crafted descriptions of URIs that are eventually translated into Resource Description Framework (RDF) graphs in which each resource is represented by a node and each statement—conveying a property—represents an edge. For example, we could take the sentence “Wali Zazi is the father of Najibullah Zazi” (the two were arrested in 2009 for conspiring to execute domestic terrorism) and endow it with machine-readable meaning. With the help of eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and an RDF graph, the Semantic Web would identify “Wali Zazi” as the sentence’s subject, “is the father of” as the sentence’s property, and “Najibullah Zazi” as the sentence’s object. In order to more fully comprehend the names in the sentence and the relationship between them, the Semantic Web would use uniform resource indicators or URIs—series of characters that identify names or resources on the Internet and generally begin with “http”—to associate each element of the sentence with a resource describing its nature, a resource that might not necessarily be a part of the Web. For example, it might associate “Wali Zazi” and “Najibullah Zazi” with a list of suspected terrorists that is not accessible by Web to the general public. After this and many other such meaning-enriched sentences have been entered into the RDF graph, our hypothetical machine can start drawing inferences, eventually making connections between the Zazi men and others who may have helped them to develop their terrorism scheme. A significant implication of this structure is that it allows users of a given RDF graph to navigate through it based on their personal interests, following statements to relevant information that reflects individual objectives and areas of curiosity. In plainer language, although the Semantic Web cannot make computers self-aware, intelligent or sensible, it can make the Web “readable” to machines so that they are able to find and, to a certain degree, decipher information.

Consider the following example: You want to buy “The Lord of the Rings” boxed set online but you have a few specifications: You want widescreen DVDs and you want only those with the extended versions and bonus material. You are willing to buy a used set but only if the quality of the DVDs is still classifiably excellent and while you don’t want to wait too long for delivery, you also don’t want to pay an excessive amount for shipping. Rather than asking you to compare the items available at Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, DVDEmpire.com, etc., the Semantic Web would allow you to input your preferences into a computerized agent that, in addition to searching the Web and finding the best option for you, could also record the amount you spent in the financial software on your computer and mark your computer calendar with the date your DVDs should arrive.[7]

The above is but a synopsis of the constituent elements behind and capabilities of the Semantic Web, whose attributes cannot be fully explored here. Rather, applying the basic knowledge presented, the remainder of this essay will try to demonstrate its potential usefulness for ongoing analyses of terrorist networks.

The Consequences of the Semantic Web for Terrorist Network Analysis

Today, for better or for worse, the U.S. government and its various representatives in the intelligence community are constantly monitoring travelers’ behavior in a surreptitious but large-scale search for mal-intentioned voyagers. Regardless of whether it is consistent with the Constitution, analysts have access to information about what individuals are denied entry into what countries, where suspects stay when they are in transit, the origin of those who visit them at their hotels, etc. Sometimes, by following the movements of two or more suspects simultaneously, they try to determine if collaboration is at work. Semantic Web technologies can facilitate these related processes of pursuit and decision-making by allowing analysts to draw on stored information about the individual suspects in question, such as where they have traveled in the past, if ever they have been in the same location, if they have in common an affiliation with a specific (religious) organization, and so on. Here, the results of initial behavioral scrutiny are essentially input factors into the Semantic Web, which instantaneously links them to relevant available files, allowing analysts to engineer a comprehensive picture of what is going on and to respond to it in a suitable and timely manner without being delayed by the distractions of superfluous information.

The careful plotting of a terrorist network or organization is no modest task but instead requires an onerous series of steps, including collecting data, harmonizing data, and accurately pinpointing relationships between data points. As this process is continually repeated for the sake of completeness, irrelevant data is inevitably accumulated in discouragingly large quantities. Google, the most prominent and most used of traditional search engines, only exacerbates this crisis of immaterial information through its PageRank link analysis algorithm, an approximation of citation importance on the Web that assigns a numerical weighting to hyperlinks for the purpose of determining their relative importance in comparison with other links. PageRank is, essentially, a vote, by all the other pages on the Web, about how important a page is, where a link to a page counts as a vote of support. In the end, the more times a page is linked to and the more times it is linked to by frequently cited pages, the greater its numerical weighting and the more likely it is to appear at the top of search results. Inevitably, this algorithm will consider any frequently or habitually cited page as “relevant,” regardless of whether that page’s content truly reflects, from the user’s perspective, the query that caused it to surface. A Google search for “Abu al Zarqawi,” a close associate of Osama bin Laden, and “Israel,” into which Zarqawi has been accused of smuggling terrorists, generates approximately 148,000 results; however, only a handful of these, scattered throughout, offer information about the connection between Zarqawi and Israel. Most are Web pages that include both the words “Zarqawi” and “Israel” in them, but only coincidentally. The Semantic Web, by contrast, is more discriminatory and would allow researchers to endow the search phrase “Zarqawi+Israel” or “Zarqawi and Israel” with a specific meaning—perhaps related to Zarqawi’s smuggling activity in Israel—so that only the most appropriate information is retrieved and entered into the Web portal.

Additionally, standard search engines can only return data formatted in words and numbers, despite the fact that images, pictures and photographs often convey linkages as well. Fortunately for intelligence case officers, the Semantic Web makes it possible to associate notes, theories and other facts and messages with these forms of information so that no stone is left unturned. For instance, terrorists sometimes communicate through graffiti on the walls and building sides of urban spaces in a way that signifies a “secrete cable of ‘others’ who could strike without warning.”[8] Images of this crafty means of interchange could undoubtedly be helpful as intelligence officers shadow prospective human threats and establish their relationship to other terrorist network insiders.

The Semantic Web is also valuable when aliases, pseudonyms, monikers and other kinds of assumed names come into play. MSNBC.com provides a list of basic information on at-large al Qaeda operatives, including their nicknames when these are known. Some on the list, such as Ayman al Zawahiri, have upwards of twelve known aliases. Fazul Abdullah Mohammed boasts more than 15. Others, including Midhat Mursi, have only one but these can be drastically different from the individuals’ actual names (Mursi’s is Abu Khabab). What is more, MSNBC accentuates that some of its spellings/transliterations “may vary from what has been published elsewhere since different Arab countries use different spellings of even the most common names,”[9] compelling us to acknowledge that illicit activity has probably gone unnoticed in the past because of the failure of traditional search instruments to encode the relationship between, for example, Uday and Oday or Khaddafy and Ghaddafi. A Google search using “Ghaddafi” does not return results with the name “Khaddafy”—a fairly common alternative spelling—nor does it offer the latter as a suggestion for a related search. The Semantic Web represents a way in which to equate multiple alternative spellings and/or to recognize aliases such as “The Doctor” or “The Manager,” making it less easy to unintentionally overlook constructive information.

In the end, a terrorist network is the outcome of hundreds of personal connections. Understanding the relationships and links between the members of this category of network is critical to preemptively deterring terrorist plans or at least to interrupting them. Thankfully, the Semantic Web gives us a way in which to exhaustively describe these relationships, using our knowledge of various members’ hometowns, workplaces, residences, communal affiliations, involvement in certain events, etc. An excellent example of the Semantic Web in action comes from a dataset known as Profiles in Terror (PIT). Developed at University of Maryland, College Park, this resource contains counter-terrorism intelligence information collected from various publicly available real-world sources such as federal court indictments and news reports.[10]

This diagram[11], generated using a PIT demo, acts as a visual representation for the arguments presented above. As we can see, it contains both events (Passover Massacre, Taher calls Sayyed, Driver recruited, etc.) and names (Mohammed Taher, etc.) so that a complete or near complete picture is revealed to the analyst, unlike in the case of conventional Web portals, whose graphs simply cannot contain such a range of information.

The Obstacles that Remain: Making the Web a More Understandable (Mine-able) Place

At the foundation of the Semantic Web are machine-understandable Web pages (this characteristic is essential since it allows for the creation of expansive portals of highly applicable, congruous information). Continuing with our example of terrorism, we may want to extract from various Web pages newspaper articles, video clips, etc. about terrorist activity. These resources and the information contained in them must undergo a process of data mining, during which patterns are extracted from data, so that they become sensible to the machines directly responsible for pulling together and coherently arranging information and therefore indirectly responsible for informing analysts of potential terrorist threats.

Yet establishing a robust Web mining capacity in the context of the Semantic Web is not without its challenges. As noted by Syed Ahsan and Abad Shah, employing the technology behind data mining is difficult when it comes to matters of terrorism because much of the information pertaining to it exists in disparate databases scattered among numerous federal, provincial and local entities that often cannot or simply do not swap knowledge.[12] Nonetheless, the inadequacy of traditional Web portals as compared to the Semantic Web has been fully exposed and unless maximum efficiency and accuracy are not the goals of the CIA and U.S. Government, a concerted effort must be made to make the transition. Rather than forsake the possibilities inherent in the Semantic Web, we should work to achieve greater intergovernmental transparency and correspondence.

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[2] David Easley and John Kleinberg, Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning about a Highly Connected World, Cambridge University Press (2010), p. 3, http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-book/.

[3] Patrick Keefe, “Can Network Theory Thwart Terrorists?,” The New York Times Magazine, March 12, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/magazine/312wwln_essay.html?_r=1.

[4] Valdis Krebs, “Uncloaking Terrorist Networks,” First Monday, vol. 7, no. 4 (April 2002), http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/941/863.

[5] Robert Baer quoted in Jennifer Goldbeck, Aaron Mannes and James Hendler, “Semantic Web Technologies for Terrorist Network Analysis.”

[6] “Semantic Web,” W3C, http://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/.

[7] Tracy V. Wilson, “How Semantic Web Works,” How Stuff Works: A Discovery Company.

[8] Rene Larche, “Global Terrorism Issues and Developments,” Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2008, p. 37.

[9] “Al-Qaida Leaders, Associates,” MSNBC.com.

[10] Lise Getoor, Prithviraj Sen and Bin Zhao, “Entity and Relationship Labeling in Affiliation Networks,” Conference on Machine Learning, 2006.

[11] profilesinterror.mindswap.org

[12] Syed Ahsan and Abad Shah, “Data Mining, Semantic Web and Advanced Information Technologies for Fighting Terrorism,” IEEEXplore, 2008, p. 3. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4547644&userType=inst&tag=1.

Continued unregulated expansion of green energy is sure to strain these two limited resources. Land is an especially precious commodity, as many forms of green energy, especially solar and biomass, rely on huge tracts of land in order to be viable. Water is a just as important a commodity. All thermoelectric electricity generators, including solar, fossil, and nuclear, require water in some form, though it usually serves as a coolant.

It is important to note that current energy sources aren’t more efficient in terms of land and water use. Electricity generated from coal uses a lot of land and water. An above average size coal mine in the United States takes about 15,000 acres [1]. In addition, coal mining strips the land of its native vegetation, and causes deforestation. In the Jaintia Hills region of India, for example, the amount of forested area had dropped by 50% in 30 years by 2007, while the amount of land devoted to coal mining jumped 350% [2]. Current water use in thermoelectric plants that process fossil fuels can vary anywhere from 0.3-0.8 gallons per kilowatt-hour, but this is only for plants that have a re-circulating cooling system. For the once-through cooling systems that older plants use, the water usage can range anywhere from 7.5-50 gallons per kilowatt-hour. Currently, many plants are being upgraded so that they are more water efficient [3].

However, the problem here is that renewable energy also requires a large commitment of land and water resources, if not larger than traditional energy sources. One example is electricity generated from photovoltaic solar panels. Photovoltaic solar plants require vast amounts of land to operate. In addition, they must be built in specific regions in order to achieve maximum efficiency. The best area for these power plants is in the Southwest, as there is little to no cloud cover in the relatively arid region, so the greatest amount of solar radiation hits in that area for the greatest amount of time each year. However, large photovoltaic cell power plants use up to 180 acres [4]. The principle problem is that photovoltaic power plants are much less efficient than coal. While coal produces roughly 5,376,000 kWh per acre, the most efficient photovoltaic power plant to be built in the Mojave Desert, the AV Solar Ranch One, will only produce 285,714 kWh per acre. Therefore, in order for solar energy to completely replace coal energy as the primary source of electricity, solar energy will have to take up around 19 times the land area currently used for coal mining, and this is the best case scenario, when solar energy generation is most efficient. It’s also important that coal mining does up heave a lot of land, but the land can be reclaimed for other uses once the coal is extracted from the area [2]. Photovoltaic power plants will take up the land indefinitely, causing long term damage to the area.

Another type of solar energy power plant, the solar tower, has the same shortfalls as photovoltaic plants. They work by using mirrors to reflect sunlight onto one solar tower, which uses the heat generated to create steam from water, thus turning turbines. Solar towers must also be built in arid regions for maximum efficiency, which not only disturbs the land, but also drains the water from the region. Arid regions are already devoid of water, and the solar tower requires water to generate the steam power. Therefore, because of the scarcity of water in these regions, it must be brought in from other areas [4]. Water resources are already strained in the area, and groundwater is quickly disappearing. Although exact numbers for groundwater depletion have not been measured, the United States Geological Survey estimates that around the western border of the Mojave Desert, the primary location for solar plants, has experienced a 75 foot decline in groundwater levels since 1902. The eastern border is much worse off, with groundwater levels dropping roughly 150-200 feet since 1902 [5]. This causes a large amount of strain on water resources in the area, and the states bordering the Mojave Desert to the west and east, California and Colorado, are already facing a water crisis. The continued expansion of solar tower power plants is sure to cause a large amount of stress on water resources in the region in future years.

However, the renewable energy source that relies most heavily on land and water is biomass. Biomass is usually generated from either the same land as that used in agriculture, or competes with it. The problem with biomass energy comes from the vast amounts of land that it requires, and the competing interests that it poses. Land use in biomass energy has been extensively studied, especially in small regions such as Hawaii. The problem presented by the production of biomass energy is amplified in small regions, as there must be a careful balance maintained between land used for biomass energy, for agriculture, and for natural biospheres such as forests or swamps [6]. For example, the federal ethanol subsidies enacted in the United States created a complex tradeoff where farmers had to divide their limited land for corn production into corn used for ethanol and corn used for food. This division of land led to an increase in food prices of roughly 5% for wheat and 7% for corn [7]. Competing interests because of limited land causes catastrophic results for the vast majority of citizens, who rely on low food prices every day for sustenance. Agriculture already uses most of the land that can be used for biomass energy, so an increase in the biomass energy demand must result in an expansion of land use. Unfortunately, this results in either deforestation or wetland draining, as these are the main methods through which land is reclaimed [8]. These actions result in a huge loss of biodiversity, as well as loss of some of the most important carbon sinks left in the world. Conversion of forests or wetlands into farm land on a global scale contributes a yearly net increase of about 1.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is roughly a fourth of the carbon dioxide generated from fossil fuel combustion each year [8]. It is also clear that any expansion of biomass production requires a greater use of water. Agriculture already accounts for 33% of the water use in the United States [9], and increasing biomass production means increasing water use. This is a huge problem, as areas such as California and Colorado are experiencing a water crisis, where their water reservoirs are quickly drying up. In these areas, attempting to devote more land to agriculture means a greater strain on water supplies, which is ultimately unsustainable [5].

With the limitations of renewable energy clear, there is imminent need for a solution. Land and water use is intrinsically tied with the development of all of these forms of renewable energy. The solution, then, becomes controlling the development of each renewable energy source so a balance is struck between reducing greenhouse gas emissions and protecting vital resources.

The first issue to tackle is the impending water crisis. While an overarching plan of water distribution must come on a national level, conserving existing water supplies is incredibly important. A vital imperative for both local and national governments is to ensure that water delivery methods do not leak and are in good repair. Although this may sound rather banal and obvious, the fact remains that several billion gallons of drinking water are lost each day because of leaky pipes in America alone [1]. It is imperative that this most basic of problems in the water supply is fixed.

Yet the growing scarcity of water requires further action beyond fixing local water pipes. There must be a greater focus on management of water resources. One easy way to force greater oversight of water resources is to simply raise its price. This would force greater water conservation. Total water usage in the United States amounts to 410,000 million gallons per day, with about 49% being used for thermoelectric power and 33% for agriculture [9]. A boom in the use of solar power or in biomass production would result in a greater demand for already scarce water in America. This boom must be controlled, at the very least by forcing companies to conserve more water as they expand their business.

The land usage crisis poses a separate yet equally as important issue. The amount of potential land for renewable energy development is extremely limited, and much of this land is federally owned. The federal government owns a total of 650 million acres of land, but less than half of it is even suitable for renewable energy development, and development is only commercially viable on only a quarter of federal lands [10]. The first step is to temporarily freeze any further land reclamation activity, or at least severely limit it. The next step is to create a tax on land reclamation, similar to a carbon tax. This tax would be calculated based on the net increase in carbon dioxide emissions, the loss of biodiversity, and possibly other factors as well. This would create an economic disincentive for increased land use. Although this might have the effect of severely limiting the expansion of some forms of renewable energy such as biomass, it would also force companies to focus their efforts on discovering more land-friendly forms of biomass energy. This is an extremely daunting task, but wasteful land usage will only spell disaster for renewable energy.

The limitations of renewable energy are still omnipresent, and as the nation moves to embrace renewable energy, the growing scarcity of water and land are important issues that must be considered. Although alternative energy is being marketed as a sort of panacea for the problems of climate change and energy dependence, an idealistic view of alternative energy will only lead to neglect of the conservation of resources.  By then, it may already be too late.

References

1. http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/sites/default/files/RC2009_full_report.pdf.
2. Sarma, K, Kushwaha, S.P.S. “Coal Mining Impact on Land Use/Land Cover in Jaintia Hills District of Meghalaya, India Using Remote Sensing and Gis Technique.” Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University School of Environment Management. 2005.
3. The Energy Foundation. “The Last Straw: Water Use by Power Plants in the Arid West.” 2003.
4. Ren21. “Renewables: Global Status Report 2009 Update.” 2009.
5. Konikow L, Kendy E. “Groundwater depletion: A global problem.” Hydrogeology Journal. 2005 American Society of Civil Engineers. “2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.” 2009.
6. G. G. Marten, o. Babar, L. Christanty, P. Kasturi, O. Lewis, C. Mulcock and I. Willington, “Environmental considerations for biomass energy development: Hawaii case study”, East-West Environment and Policy Institute Report No 9, HI, USA, 1981.
7. Mitchell, Donald. “A Note on Rising Food Prices.” The World Bank.
8. Watson, Robert T, et al. IPCC Special Report on Land Use, Land-Use Change And Forestry. IPCC. 2000.
9. Kenny, J.F., Barber, N.L., Hutson, S.S., Linsey, K.S., Lovelace, J.K., and Maupin, M.A., 2009, Estimated use of water in the United States in 2005: U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1344, 52 p.
10. U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of the Interior. “Assessing the Potential for Renewable Energy on Public Lands”. 2003.

Allan is a first-year at the University of Chicago.

For the 2009 season, the FIA allowed constructors to use a technology called the Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) as one of several measures to increase the frequency of overtakes and thus enhance the intensity of the sport. The development of this technology also placed the sport in a stance of greater environmental responsibility, as the hybrid technology pioneered in Formula 1 would facilitate the development of more efficient regenerative braking systems in the automotive industry [2]. The maximum performance of KERS systems was strictly restricted by the FIA to a boost of 60kW, with no more than 300kJ on board at any time [3]. Aware of the potential of this technology, teams in the 2009 season contributed impressive development in the technology of regenerative brake systems. The KERS systems developed for 2009 were able to provide up to seven seconds of boost per lap – a significant on-track advantage and a promising leap forward for the hybrid technology.

The idea of harnessing kinetic energy released through braking has been around for over a century. The principle is easy to understand – the kinetic energy of a moving vehicle is converted to heat energy by friction. This heat energy is usually dissipated from the brake rotors and pads and essentially wasted. KERS technology stores this kinetic energy mechanically, using a flywheel, or chemically, using a battery or supercapacitor. However alien this technology may seem, it is already being used in Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive, which stores energy in the batteries of its hybrid cars upon deceleration [4]. KERS in Formula 1 goes a step further, increasing the efficiency of such a system by using a battery optimized for fast storage and retrieval or a lightweight flywheel.

The first implementation of this technology was developed by an engineer named Jon Hilton, who heard the president of the FIA, Max Mosley, announce that Formula One would pursue regenerative brake systems at the British Grand Prix in 2006. Hilton and his design partner, Doug Cross, formed Flybrid Systems LLC in 2007. With funding directly from the partners’ pockets, Hilton and Cross were able to fully manufacture a mechanical KERS system in just 12 months [5].

The Flybrid system consists of a flywheel connected to the transmission of the car via a continuously variable transmission (CVT) supplied by Torotrak. When braking, the gear ratio is changed so as to speed up the flywheel as the car decelerates. In order to release this energy, the gear ratio is then changed to slow the flywheel and transfer that additional power to the transmission. On paper, this process is extremely simple; however, when spinning a 5 kilogram flywheel at 65,000 rpm, friction and heat become major obstacles. The since-patented F1 Flybrid system had the chamber housing the flywheel in a near-perfect vacuum at a pressure of 1 x 10^-7 bar and used ceramic bearings to minimize friction [6].

Even in a hermetically-sealed vacuum environment, it is difficult to imagine that a flywheel could spin indefinitely and have any meaningful kinetic energy left over after a few turns. In the Flybrid system, however, friction was minimized to the degree that over the course of a full minute, the losses in the rotational speed of the flywheel equate to roughly 2%. Given that the 95^th percentile stop time for an average car is 55 seconds, the losses in power are minimal.  The simplicity of the Flybrid system, in addition to its efficiency in conserving energy in a mechanical state, allows the Flybrid KERS to have its extraordinary performance at the cost of only 25 kilograms [5]. Like Flybrid, competitor companies Torotrak and Xtrac are also developing mechanical CVT/Flywheel-based KERS devices for use in Formula One and beyond.

Electro-chemical means of kinetic energy storage were meanwhile explored by Zytec – the company which developed the McLaren F1 KERS device [7]. McLaren F1’s KERS device was rumored to be most advanced in the 2009 Formula One season, and though Zytec’s contract with McLaren was revealed, the details of the system are largely unknown [8]. Another team, Renault F1, also used a similar KERS system made jointly by automotive giant Magneti Morelli and SAFT, a cutting-edge French battery solution company. It features an electric motor-generator unit (MGU) coupled with a lithium-ion battery and boasts round-trip efficiency of up to 70%, which is very impressive considering the inherent conversion from mechanical to electrical to chemical energy and back [9]. While creating its KERS device, the Williams Formula 1 team actually purchased a company called Automotive Hybrid Power Limited, now known as Williams Hybrid Power, which is also investigating means of electrical energy storage for consumer automobiles, city transportation, and rapid transit systems [10, 11].

Currently, Flybrid is collaborating with Magneti Morelli and it has already produced a 27-kilogram electric KERS device for the automotive industry, though its original mechanical KERS device is more developed and is expected to be sold in volume in 2013.  The original Flybrid KERS device promises fuel savings and CO₂ reductions of up to 30% while maintaining a design-life of 250000 miles [5]. The benefits of such systems for consumer automobiles would be enormous, yielding increases in fuel economy of ten miles per gallon or more, and could be easily implemented.

For the trucking industry, the benefits of regenerative braking are even more pronounced, and especially impactful in the United States, where trucking accounts for roughly 70% of total freight tonnage per year.  In 2008, the trucking industry generated nearly 750 billion dollars in revenue while wasting as much as 170 billion dollars consuming 55.1 billion gallons of fuel [12].  KERS technology has the potential to reduce that number by 30%, leading to a dramatic decrease in the cost of living for average Americans and an increase in revenue for the United States economy.

Aware of the global potential of regenerative braking, FIA has determined to take advantage of the competition in Formula One to pursue even more functional solutions for the consumer automotive market.  Former president of the FIA, Max Mosley, states:

“Formula One would benefit from systems with more capacity than the present, (for example maxima of: 2MJ stored, 150KW in, 100KW out) but still very small and very light, as is essential in Formula One,” explained Mosley. “These figures are theoretically possible with mechanical devices, but not feasible in the foreseeable future using batteries and/or capacitors [13].

Expanding on these small and light systems will depend on an initiative by the automotive industry to implement KERS technology, but given the stance of the FIA, the technology is sure to raise some eyebrows in the upcoming years.  As competition amongst the F1 constructors returns to KERS in 2011, we may expect to see even greater development in regenerative brake technology in the near future.

References:

1. 2009 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Qualifying Day [image on the Internet]. 2010 [cited 2010 Nov. 20]. Available from: http://www.formula1.com/gallery/race/2009/823/general/saturday.html

2. Evans P. Formula 1 – News Index. Formula 1 – The Official Formula 1 Website [homepage on the Internet]. 2009 [cited 2010 Oct. 24]. Available from: http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2009/1/8813.html.

3. Fédération Internationale De L’Automobile . Formula One Technical Regulations [homepage on the Internet]. 2010 [updated 2010 June 23, cited 2010 Oct. 24]. Available from: http://argent.fia.com/web/fia-public.nsf/4ADA53A7369DCE8EC12576C700535E67/$FILE/1-2010%20TECHNICAL%20REGULATIONS%2023-06-2010.pdf.

4. Toyota. Hybrid Synergy Drive:  Regenerative Braking [homepage on the Internet]. 2010 [cited 2010 Nov. 20]. Available from: http://www.hybridsynergydrive.com/en/regenerative_braking.html.

5. Flybrid Systems. Original F1System – Flybrid Systems. Home – Flybrid Systems [homepage on the Internet]. 2010 [cited 2010 Oct. 24]. Available from: http://www.flybridsystems.com/F1System.html.

6. Armstrong-Wilson C. F1 KERS: Flybrid F1 Racecar Engineering. Racecar Engineering News: Motorsport Technology Explained [homepage on the Internet]. 2008 [cited 2010 Nov 20]. Available from: http://www.racecar-engineering.com/articles/f1/182017/f1-kers-flybrid.html.

7. F1Technical. Zytek Revealed as McLaren’s KERS Supplier. Formula One Uncovered! [homepage on Internet]. 2009 [cited 2010 Oct. 24]. Available from: http://www.f1technical.net/news/13046.

8. Collins S. McLaren F1 KERS Revealed. Racecar Engineering News: Motorsport Technology Explained [homepage on the Internet]. 2009 [cited 2010 Oct. 24]. Available from: http://www.racecar-engineering.com/news/people/254890/williams-f1-hybrid-kers.html.

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Andrey Kossev is a student at Georgia Tech.

While the World Wide Web does make the task of connecting with other politically like-minded individuals more effortless, the Internet inevitably fractures mass movements at an early stage. Remote and essentially anonymous, the nature of the Web encourages users to interact in a fundamentally abnormal way (as opposed to the way they would in face-to-face exchanges). The psychoanalytic concept of “transference”—the process whereby emotions are displaced from one person to another—is particularly relevant to understanding the qualities of online relationships. As noted by John Suler in his hypertext book, The Psychology of Cyberspace, because the experience of the other person is often limited to text, there is a tendency for the user to project a variety of wishes, fantasies and fears onto the ambiguous and imperceptible figure at the other end of cyberspace (Suler 1998).

Related to this phenomenon of unconscious feeling-displacement is an experience called the “disinhibition effect,” a term used to describe uncharacteristic impulsivity, contempt for social conventions and a general lack of personal restraint. With specific regard to the Internet, the sensation of disinhibition is amplified through the anonymity and status neutralization afforded one by the web. When the effects of transference and disinhibition combine, uncensored web-based conflicts are easily brought to extremes. Simply consider the innumerable Facebook group discussion boards overrun by banal but heated arguments full of ad hominem and imprudently worded attacks. With the absence of visual and auditory cues, individuals perceive their Internet communications as occurring primarily in their heads and therefore make remarks publicly that they would ordinarily only think to themselves. Essentially, the Internet induces anomie and erodes social capital by enabling users to retreat into an artificial and unexamined world that has become a substitute for concrete social interactions (DiMaggio 2001). This effect predictably makes enforcement of ideological conformity more difficult than when individuals are forced to assemble in the streets.

What does this mean for the Middle East, where Facebook, Twitter and other forms of new media have been hailed as innovative and effective ways of circumventing suppression? It means that what appears to be legitimate social activism is actually a potentially divisive force as well as a low-cost way of avoiding more open forms of protest. Facebook and its messaging service cousins threaten to estrange not only members within a group but also entire groups from members of the outside world who are engaging in more aggressive forms of activism. The majority of Internet-powered campaigns depend on the assumption that raising awareness is enough to resolve an issue, an unproblematic expectation for some local causes such as gay marriage but a completely hazardous one when it comes to questions of genocide, authoritarian regimes, etc. Indeed, interactive digital media is making it extremely difficult for many Pan-Arab initiatives, such as a recent attempt to liberate an incarcerated Egyptian dissident through translation and publication of his blogs, to elicit direct action from inhabitants of the Middle East. This dilemma is epitomized on the aforementioned campaign’s website, which features a sign reading, “Don’t Donate. Take Action.” (Evgeny 2009). As further affirmation of the disconnect between residents of cyberspace and reality, dissidents in Egypt complain that Facebook-literate citizens, extolled for bringing Egypt’s political currents and opposition figures into greater profile, give Egyptians the impression that physical unity is extraneous. A vibrant, computer-based civil society has come to displace tangible civil society to the extent that those experienced with communication technologies no longer feel it imperative to coordinate or migrate offline (Shapiro 2009).

Moreover, while interactive media is generally impervious to government resistance, autocratic regimes can easily follow Facebook activity and can even more easily distinguish, and consequently apprehend, specific protestors. As stated before, autocratic regimes’ overwhelmingly efficient response to this perceived new danger (in the form of arrests, blocks on Facebook and positioning of law enforcement at possible congregation sites) means that those Facebook-ing and Twitter-ing from home seldom or never take to the streets to execute their proposals. Furthermore, the West is apparently not sympathetic to Facebook activists as it has barely acknowledged these fresh and ill-treated oppositional voices and has certainly not pressed for their release from various prisons, which presently hold a growing number of individuals considered delinquent only because they engaged in visible dialogue.

While the role of digital new media in contributing to the emergence of a reawakened regional Arab consciousness and national identity is limited, information technologies do have their distinct advantages. Development, communications and culture researcher Dr. Loubna Skalli observes that the Internet is a driver of sociopolitical transformations that have allowed women to contribute to and participate in civic and political endeavors. Through the diverse apparatuses of new media, which do not discriminate on the basis of gender, women are finally redefining the public sphere by disseminating alternative knowledge about women, citizenship and political participation and by creating trangressive spaces (Skalli 2006). Ultimately, while micro-blogging and social networking services alone may not subdue autocratic regimes, they at least create heterogeneity among their society’s political participants and present a voice to segments of society once inaudible.

Works Cited

DiMaggio, Paul. “Social Implications of the Internet.” Annual Review of Sociology, no. 27             (2001): 307-336.

Morozov, Evgeny. “It Feels Like Activism.” Newsweek. 29 6 2009.

Skalli, Loubna. “Communicating Gender in the Public Sphere: Women and Information    Technologies in the MENA.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, no. 2 (2006).

Shapiro, Samantha. “Revolution, Facebook-Style.” The New York Times Magazine. 22 1 2009.

Suler, John. The Psychology of Cyberspace. http://users.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/psycyber.html: 1998.