Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• Scientists have discovered how to 'delete' unwanted memories

  A new documentary from PBS reveals how cutting edge science enables us to 'edit' memories - and create new ones from scratch

  Watch the Program at pbs.org

  Memory is the glue that binds our mental lives. Without it, we'd be prisoners of the present, unable to use the lessons of the past to change our future. From our first kiss to where we put our keys, memory represents who we are and how we learn and navigate the world. But how does it work? Neuroscientists using cutting-edge techniques are exploring the precise molecular mechanisms of memory. By studying a range of individuals ranging--from an 11-year-old whiz-kid who remembers every detail of his life to a woman who had memories implanted--scientists have uncovered a provocative idea. For much of human history, memory has been seen as a tape recorder that faithfully registers information and replays intact. But now, researchers are discovering that memory is far more malleable, always being written and rewritten, not just by us but by others. We are discovering the precise mechanisms that can explain and even control our memories. The question is--are we ready?

• Keeping mentally active doesn't stave off Alzheimer's disease -- only its symptoms

  Researchers from the Mayo Clinic have found that while keeping active can protect against the symptoms of Alzheimer's, it doesn't stave off the underlying disease itself. Their new study, which was published in Neurology, the journal of the American Academy of Neurologists, finds that even when symptoms are not apparent, the biological markers of Alzheimer's seem to march forward despite intellectual enrichment.

• Risk of dementia is declining, but scientists don't know why

  Dementia is on the decline, with the risk of developing it dropping 20 percent per decade since the late 1970s, according to a striking new study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

  The aging of the baby boomers means that dementia cases will surge to an all-time high -- the sheer number of older people who are living longer means that even a drop in the incidence of the disease won't solve that problem, which will exact a huge health and financial toll. But despite the popular perception that getting old invariably means people go gray and begin to lose their memory, the new data strongly suggest that, over the past few decades, the risk of developing dementia has receded for people with at least a high school education, raising hope that it may be possible to prevent one of the scariest risks of aging.

• Maternal Obesity and Diabetes Can Both QUADRUPLE Odds of Infant Autism

  When considered alongside women of a healthy weight and with no history of diabetes, the risk of having an autistic child was found to spike up to 400%,in those with a combination of the two conditions.
  ...
  When looking at independently, diabetes or obesity during pregnancy were both found to double the likelihood of the respective mother delivering an autistic child.

• Earth May Be a 1-in-700-Quintillion Kind of Place

  Still, the model is based on what we currently understand about the universe, and if there’s one thing we have figured out so far, it’s that we still don’t know very much. The model creates exoplanets based only on the ones we have discovered, which is an extremely small sample size that probably doesn’t provide a representative cross-section of all of the planets in existence.

• Meet the Robin Hood of Science

  The tale of how one researcher has made nearly every scientific paper ever published available for free to anyone, anywhere in the world.

  On September 5th, 2011, Alexandra Elbakyan, a researcher from Kazakhstan, created Sci-Hub, a website that bypasses journal paywalls, illegally providing access to nearly every scientific paper ever published immediately to anyone who wants it.

• Accepting Pain Over Comfort: Resistance to the Use of Anesthesia in the Mid-19th Century.

  News of the successful use of ether anesthesia on October 16, 1846, spread rapidly through the world. Considered one of the greatest medical discoveries, this triumph over man's cardinal symptom, the symptom most likely to persuade patients to seek medical attention, was praised by physicians and patients alike. Incredibly, this option was not accepted by all, and opposition to the use of anesthesia persisted among some sections of society decades after its introduction.
  ...
  Although it appears inconceivable that such a major medical advance would face opposition, a historical examination reveals several logical grounds for the initial societal and medical skepticism.

• What Breaking Up the Banks Wouldn't Fix

  The banks are too big to fail. They're also too broken to perform their basic job well.

  But it wouldn't address the other major ongoing failure of our financial system, namely that banks are taking on too much risk, and in the process endangering the entire economy and necessitating occasional bailouts. When the economy gets into trouble those 10 smaller Citibanks will probably all get into trouble exactly at the same time, requiring 10 smaller bailouts, or one large bailout of the "markets."

  It's crucial to remember in all of this that banks are not just victims of economic downturns--they also cause them with their reckless behavior. To stop that government needs to address their compensation structure, not just their size. Bankers today have little financial interest in their banks' health, which leads them to irresponsible behavior.

• Don't Break Up the Banks. They're Not Our Real Problem.

  Now that we have a new bank regulatory regime that seems to be working, we should not complicate it with breakup proposals whose ultimate implications are unclear at best. But it is absolutely crucial that the new regulations not be rolled back. The Federal Reserve should continue its annual stress tests of the large banks. Calls for restricting the power of the consumer protection board should be rejected outright.

  The central economic problem of our time is income inequality, especially the lack of personal income growth for most Americans, which was one of the underlying causes of the financial crisis. In lieu of rising incomes, credit was allowed to be democratized. Living standards were maintained only because increased credit supplemented deteriorating incomes. That helps explain, post-crisis, why United States growth is slow: Without easy credit, consumers cannot increase spending, because their incomes have fallen since 2007.

  If we want a stronger economy, improving the distribution and growth of personal income should be our focus. Breaking up the big banks will not help, and might even hurt.

• What do economists think about buying vs renting a house?

  Housing is overrated as a financial investment. First, it's not good to have a significant share of your wealth locked into a single asset. Diversification is better and it's easier to diversify with stocks. Second, unless you are renting the basement, houses don't pay dividends. Stocks do. You can hope that your house will accumulate in value but don't count on it. Indeed, you should expect that as an investment your house will appreciate less than does the stock market. You didn't expect to get a great investment and a place to live in the meantime did you? TANSTAAFL.

• Fear of Vengeful Gods Helped Societies Expand

  Belief in an all-seeing punitive god motivates people to be more charitable towards strangers outside their own family and community, particularly to those of similar beliefs, researchers have found.

  In an accompanying commentary, Dominic D P Johnson from the University of Oxford pointed out the study did not explore whether the influence of an all-seeing powerful punisher on fairness would extend to individuals from different or no religious persuasion.

  However, he said, the results offered "the most explicit evidence yet that belief in supernatural punishment has been instrumental in boosting cooperation in human societies."

• Bulletproof Stockings, World's First All-Female Hasidic Rock Band

  The only difference between this Chasidic girl band and their secular counterparts is that their audience is female — at least that’s the official consensus. That’s not to say that all the women are Jewish.

  As Hasidic women, the band’s musicians cannot play for men because of the modesty prohibition of kol isha, which dictates that a Jewish man should not hear a woman sing if she is not related to him.

Some web links related to economics and economists.

• Why Do Americans Work So Much?

  The economist John Maynard Keynes predicted a society so prosperous that people would hardly have to work. But that isn't exactly how things have played out.

  According to Friedman, "Between 1947 and 1973 the average hourly wage for nonsupervisory workers in private industries other than agriculture (restated in 2013 dollars) nearly doubled, from $12.27 to $21.23--an average growth rate of 2.1 percent per annum. But by 2013 the average hourly wage was only $20.13--a 5 percent fall from the 1973 level." For most people, then, the magic of increasing productivity stopped working around 1973, and they had to keep working just as much in order to maintain their standard of living.
  ...
  This explanation leaves an important question: If the very rich--the workers who have reaped above-average gains from the increased productivity since Keynes's time--can afford to work less, why don't they? I asked Friedman about this and he theorized that for many top earners, work is a labor of love. They are doing work they care about and are interested in, and doing more of it isn't such a burden--it may even be a pleasure. They derive meaning from their jobs, and it is an important part of how they think of themselves. And, of course, they are compensated for it at a level that makes it worth their while.

• What's Wrong with Inequality?

  The Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS)

  Wealth inequalities too frequently result from injustice. And they too frequently lead to more injustice. That's because they allow those with wealth to influence the political process. Strategies all the way from lobbying to outright bribery enable the wealthy to safeguard existing privileges and to obtain even more special favors from politicians. As long as such favors are available, inequality will be self-sustaining and self-perpetuating.

  The real problem of inequality isn't the existence of numerical differences in wealth or gains and losses in the sizes of the pieces of a supposedly fixed pie. In the real world, the problems that rightly make ordinary people -- including both Occupy protesters and Tea Partiers -- angry are rooted in theft, privilege, and political cronyism.

• Ideological divisions in economics undermine its value to the public

  Yet whereas their peers in the natural sciences can edit genes and spot new planets, economists cannot reliably predict, let alone prevent, recessions or other economic events. Indeed, some claim that economics is based not so much on empirical observation and rational analysis as on ideology.

• Why Can't Economists Be Trusted? Ask an Economist

  Victoria Bateman

  So here is my own five-point plan for how we economists can bring about a revitalized, more relevant, profession.

  1. Get interdisciplinary

     Economics has cut itself off through the imperialist tendency to see itself as the king of social sciences.

  2. Look beyond the West

     In the 1980s, 36 percent of global GDP and 43 percent of global GDP growth was accounted for by emerging and developing economies. In the last five years, these numbers have increased to 56 percent and 79 percent respectively.

  3. Promote a sexual revolution

     It is only by incorporating gender that economists can reach a fuller understanding of the causes of poverty, slow growth and inequality.

  4. Focus on data

     it would also be helpful if students were properly introduced to the wealth of data available these days, and to the basics of both how to "clean it up" and how to think about causality in the context of real world scenarios.

  5. Get in touch with our human side

     Whilst some economists see the departures from the rational behavior assumed by their models as nothing more than trifling, others of us believe that it is only by accepting that humans are human that we can explain the real fundamentals of economics: the causes of boom and bust, the drivers of entrepreneurship and growth, and how people can become locked into poverty.