The Ideas and Institutions Holding Up Society Are Disintegrating | Alternet: "My research proved so mind-boggling that it led to my leaving the university. I saw that genetically identical cells put into different environments have different fates. I'd start with genetically identical stem cells, change some of the constituents of their environment, and the stem cells would form muscle; change the environment a little bit differently and genetically identical cells would form bone; change it yet again, and another group of genetically identical cells would form fat cells.
I was teaching medical students that genes control life, yet my research said that the genes were actually controlled by the organism's response to the environment.
That work ultimately led to The Biology of Belief, and presaged epi-genetics, one of today's leading areas of research in biomedicine. Epi is a prefix that means above. Epidermis means the layer above the dermis. Epi-genetic control literally means "control above the genes.""
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Sunday, February 21, 2016
The China Delusion | naked capitalism
The China Delusion | naked capitalism:
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The China Delusion
By Robert Johnson, President of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and a Senior Fellow and Director of the Global Finance Project for the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in New York. Originally published at the Institute of New Economic Thinking website
China’s management of its exchange rate peg continues to rattle global financial markets. Uncertainty about renminbi devaluation is fuelling fears that deflationary forces will sweep through emerging markets and deliver a blow to developed economies, where interest rates are at, or near, zero and thus cannot be lowered to defend against imported deflation. Fiscal gridlock in Europe and the US is heightening the angst.
But the current bout of exchange rate anxiety is really just a symptom of the fact that China’s transition from an export-led growth strategy to one propelled by domestic consumption is proceeding far less smoothly than hoped. For some people, visions of the wonders of capitalism with Chinese characteristics remain undiminished. They are certain that, after more than three decades of state-directed growth, China’s leaders know what to do to turn their slumping economy around.
The optimists’ unreality is rivalled by that of supply-siders, who would apply shock therapy to China’s slumping state sector and immediately integrate the country’s underdeveloped capital markets into today’s turbulent global financial system. That is a profoundly dangerous prescription. The power of the market to transform China will not be unleashed in a stagnant economy, where such measures would aggravate deflationary forces and produce a calamity.
The persistent downward pressure on the renminbi reflects a growing fear that Chinese policymakers have no coherent solution to the dilemmas they face. Floating the renminbi, for example, is a dangerous option. After all, with the Chinese economy undergoing wholesale economic transformation, estimating a long-term equilibrium exchange rate that will anchor speculation is virtually impossible, particularly given persistent doubts about data quality, disclosure, and opaque policymaking processes.
But if the current exchange-rate peg to a basket of currencies fails to anchor the renminbi and prevent sharp depreciation, the deflationary consequences for the world economy will be profound. Moreover, they will feed back on the Chinese export sector, thus dampening the stimulative impact of a weakened currency.
The key to stabilising the exchange rate lies in creating a credible development policy. Only then will the pressure on the renminbi, and on China’s foreign-exchange reserves, subside, because investors will see a clear way forward.
Establishing policy credibility will require diminishing the muddled microeconomic incentives of state control and guarantees. It will also require reinvigorating aggregate demand by targeting fiscal policy to support the emerging economic sectors that will underpin the new growth model.
But, as usual with China, such a strategy is riddled with contradictions. For example, reducing the size of the state-enterprise sector is necessary, yet would be certain to depress aggregate demand at a time when demand is already soft. Likewise, cutting fiscal support (via government-directed bank lending) to zombie firms would free up fiscal capacity and enable resources to be redirected to new sectors that facilitate services and urban employment; but this would exacerbate – at least at first – the current demand shortfall.
Slashing the state sector abruptly and expecting to achieve transformation through austerity is not the way forward. Economic historians, notably Michael Bernstein in his study of the great depression in the US, have convincingly shown that an economy in transition requires strong aggregate demand to pull resources into new sectors. If both the old and new sectors of an economy are in a slump, capital formation will sputter, investment in upgrading human capital will decline, and structural adjustment will stall. Robust aggregate demand is always essential to successful transformation.
An equally large obstacle to China’s economic transition – the problem that almost dare not speak its name – is the widespread worship of China’s hybrid market economy. Simply put, current muddled market incentives impede transformation by favouring state-owned enterprises.
In early 2012, when the Chinese leadership moved toward stronger private ownership, stocks in the private-sector sub-index outperformed the state-owned sector sub-index on both the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges. But since the spring of 2014, this trend has reversed, and the state-owned sector sub-index has outperformed the private-sector sub-index. As the Chinese economy slows and default risk grows, the value of state guarantees rises, directing capital away from private-sector growth.
This hybrid system clearly impedes credit allocation from catalysing development while creating and sustaining vested interests opposed to change. This holding pattern is particularly harmful because profound transformation will surely depend on financing from a sound sovereign bond market, which cannot function properly until uncertainty related to the government’s contingent liabilities – all those implicit guarantees – has been resolved.
China has it within its power to stabilise its exchange rate via credible reforms, particularly policies that redirect resources to invigorate domestic demand and pull resources toward the newer high-value sectors. The overhaul China needs cannot be accomplished in a slump, or by a large exchange-rate depreciation that deflates the world in a vain effort to turn back the clock to an era of export-led growth that stagnant demand in the west has rendered nonviable.
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Sunday, September 13, 2015
New Method Removes Carbon from the Air, Churns Out Valuable Carbon Products | MIT Technology Review
New Method Removes Carbon from the Air, Churns Out Valuable Carbon Products | MIT Technology Review
versatile building material.
A new method for taking carbon dioxide directly from the air and
converting it to oxygen and nanoscale fibers made of carbon could lead
to an inexpensive way to make a valuable building material—and may even
serve as a weapon against climate change.
Carbon fibers are increasingly being used as a structural material on
the aerospace, automotive, and other industries, which value its
strength and light weight. The useful attributes of carbon fibers, which
also include electrical conductivity, are enhanced at the nanoscale,
says Stuart Licht,
a professor of chemistry at George Washington University. The problem
is that it’s very expensive to make carbon fibers, much less nanofibers.
Licht says his group’s newly demonstrated
technology, which both captures the carbon dioxide from the air and
employs an electrochemical process to convert it to carbon nanofibers
and oxygen, is more efficient and potentially a lot cheaper than
existing methods.
But it’s more than just a simpler, less expensive way of making a
high-value product. It’s also a “means of storing and sequestering
carbon dioxide in a useful manner, a stable manner, and in a compact
manner,” says Licht. He points out that if the process is powered by
renewable energy, the result is a net removal of carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere. In a recent demonstration, his group used a unique concentrated solar power system,
which makes use of infrared sunlight as well as visible light to
generate the large amount of heat needed to run the desired reaction.
The process requires molten lithium carbonate, with another compound,
lithium oxide, dissolved in it. The lithium oxide combines with carbon
dioxide in the air, forming more lithium carbonate. When voltage is
applied across two electrodes immersed in the molten carbonate, the
resulting reaction produces oxygen, carbon (which deposits on one of the
electrodes), and lithium oxide, which can be used to capture more
carbon dioxide and start the process again.
The researchers demonstrated the ability to make a variety of
different nanofiber shapes and diameters by adjusting specific growth
conditions, such as the amount of current applied at specific points of
time and the composition of the various ingredients used in the process.
They also showed they could make very uniform fibers. Licht says the
mechanisms underlying the formation of the fibers still need to be
better understood, and he’s confident the group can keep developing more
control over the nature of the fibers it makes.
As for the technology’s emissions-cutting potential, the researchers
are optimistic. They calculate that given an area less than 10 percent
of the size of the Sahara Desert, the method could remove enough carbon
dioxide to make global atmospheric levels return to preindustrial levels
within 10 years, even if we keep emitting the greenhouse gas at a high
rate during that period.
Of course, this would require a huge increase in demand for carbon
nanofibers. Licht believes the material’s properties, especially the
fact that it is so lightweight and also very strong, will spur greater
and greater use as the cost comes down, and he thinks his new process
can help with that. Imagine that carbon fiber composites eventually
replace steel, aluminum, and even concrete as a building material, he
says. “At that point, there could be sufficient use of this that it’s
actually acting as a significant repository of carbon.”
versatile building material.
A new method for taking carbon dioxide directly from the air and
converting it to oxygen and nanoscale fibers made of carbon could lead
to an inexpensive way to make a valuable building material—and may even
serve as a weapon against climate change.
Carbon fibers are increasingly being used as a structural material on
the aerospace, automotive, and other industries, which value its
strength and light weight. The useful attributes of carbon fibers, which
also include electrical conductivity, are enhanced at the nanoscale,
says Stuart Licht,
a professor of chemistry at George Washington University. The problem
is that it’s very expensive to make carbon fibers, much less nanofibers.
Licht says his group’s newly demonstrated
technology, which both captures the carbon dioxide from the air and
employs an electrochemical process to convert it to carbon nanofibers
and oxygen, is more efficient and potentially a lot cheaper than
existing methods.
But it’s more than just a simpler, less expensive way of making a
high-value product. It’s also a “means of storing and sequestering
carbon dioxide in a useful manner, a stable manner, and in a compact
manner,” says Licht. He points out that if the process is powered by
renewable energy, the result is a net removal of carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere. In a recent demonstration, his group used a unique concentrated solar power system,
which makes use of infrared sunlight as well as visible light to
generate the large amount of heat needed to run the desired reaction.
The process requires molten lithium carbonate, with another compound,
lithium oxide, dissolved in it. The lithium oxide combines with carbon
dioxide in the air, forming more lithium carbonate. When voltage is
applied across two electrodes immersed in the molten carbonate, the
resulting reaction produces oxygen, carbon (which deposits on one of the
electrodes), and lithium oxide, which can be used to capture more
carbon dioxide and start the process again.
The researchers demonstrated the ability to make a variety of
different nanofiber shapes and diameters by adjusting specific growth
conditions, such as the amount of current applied at specific points of
time and the composition of the various ingredients used in the process.
They also showed they could make very uniform fibers. Licht says the
mechanisms underlying the formation of the fibers still need to be
better understood, and he’s confident the group can keep developing more
control over the nature of the fibers it makes.
As for the technology’s emissions-cutting potential, the researchers
are optimistic. They calculate that given an area less than 10 percent
of the size of the Sahara Desert, the method could remove enough carbon
dioxide to make global atmospheric levels return to preindustrial levels
within 10 years, even if we keep emitting the greenhouse gas at a high
rate during that period.
Of course, this would require a huge increase in demand for carbon
nanofibers. Licht believes the material’s properties, especially the
fact that it is so lightweight and also very strong, will spur greater
and greater use as the cost comes down, and he thinks his new process
can help with that. Imagine that carbon fiber composites eventually
replace steel, aluminum, and even concrete as a building material, he
says. “At that point, there could be sufficient use of this that it’s
actually acting as a significant repository of carbon.”
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