November 14, 2007, 9:49 PM CT

CGD ranks CO2 emissions from power plants

Now for the first time, the CO2 emissions of 50,000 power plants worldwide, the globes most concentrated source of greenhouse gases, have been compiled into a massive new data base, called CARMACarbon Monitoring for Action.

The on-line database, compiled by the Center for Global Development (CGD), an independent policy and research organization that focuses on how the actions of the rich world shape the lives of poor people in developing countries, lays out exactly where the CO2 emitters are and how much of the greenhouse gas they are casting into the atmosphere. It also shows which companies own the plants.

A research team, led by David Wheeler, a senior fellow at CGD, constructed the enormous database to help speed the shift to less carbon-intensive power generation with the objective of minimizing global warming which is and will hurt poor people in developing countries first and worst. The CARMA data is arrayed on a user-friendly website: www.CARMA.org.

The database and its website rank individual power plants, plotting their location by latitude and longitude. The data for total power-related emissions can be displayed by cities, states or provinces, and countries. For the U.S., emissions data are also available for Congressional districts, counties and metro areas, making it possible for the first time to compare total power-related emissions by locality......... Posted by: Tom      Read more         Source

November 14, 2007, 9:30 PM CT

What's in a Name? Initials Linked to Success

Do you like your name and initials? Most people do and, as past research has shown, sometimes we like them enough to influence other important behaviors. For example, Jack is more likely to move to Jacksonville and marry Jackie than is Philip who is more likely to move to Philadelphia and marry Phyllis. Researchers call this phenomenon the "name-letter effect" and argue that it is influential enough to encourage the pursuit of name-resembling life outcomes and partners.

However, if you like your name too much, you might be in trouble. Leif Nelson at the University of California, San Diego and colleague Joseph Simmons from Yale University, observed that liking your own name sabotages success for people whose initials match negative performance labels.

In their first study, Nelson and Simmons investigated the effect of name resemblance on batters' strikeouts. In baseball, strikeouts are recorded using the letter 'K.' After analyzing Major League Baseball players' performance spanning 93 years, the scientists observed that batters whose names began with 'K' struck out at a higher rate than the remaining batters. "Even Karl 'Koley' Kolseth would find a strikeout aversive, but he might find it a little less aversive than players who do not share his initials, and therefore he might avoid striking out less enthusiastically," write the authors......... Posted by: Tom      Read more         Source

November 14, 2007, 9:03 PM CT

Local bars, not liquor stores, associated with heavy drinking

Bars and nightclubs, but not liquor stores, are linked with excessive alcohol consumption and heavy episodic drinking in adults who live nearby, as per a new study from the Pardee RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica, California.

Commonly people believe that liquor stores define a neighborhoods alcohol consumption, but we didnt find any relationship between them and problem drinking among the adult population in California, says author Khoa Truong, PhD.

Instead, the researchers say that overall, their findings point to so-called minor-restricted establishments -- adults-only bars and nightclubs -- as having the most consistent and sizeable effects on adult problem drinking, even though they accounted for only about six percent of the total number of alcohol retail licenses in the area studied.

After accounting for ones education level, income, race, and neighborhood sociodemographic characteristics, we observed that a higher number of minor-restricted establishments located within one mile from someones home is linked to that persons higher likelihood of binge drinking and consuming excess alcohol, the authors write.

If the number of minor-restricted establishments increases, on average, from zero to two in a neighborhood, the prevalence of heavy episodic drinking in the past 30 days would increase from 11.1 percent to 14.3 percent among women and from 19.6 percent to 22.0 percent among men; and prevalence of riding with a driver who perhaps had too much to drink would increase from 2.9 percent to 4.1 percent among women and 4.0 percent to 5.5 percent among men, says Truong......... Posted by: Tom      Read more         Source

November 13, 2007, 9:36 PM CT

Risk of disability with income inequality

A massive survey conducted by scientists at the University of Toronto reveals Americans living in states with high rates of income inequality are significantly more likely to have a disability that limits the completion of daily tasks such as dressing, bathing and mobility at home.

Weve always known personal income and education can affect ones health outcomes, says Esme Fuller-Thomson, co-author of study and assistant professor of social work at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at U of T. What we didnt know until now was the substantial strength of the relationship between state-level income inequality and disability. This research shows that individuals have a higher likelihood of physical disability when they live in states where wealth is distributed very unevenly.

Fuller-Thomson and Tahany Gadalla, co-author of study and assistant professor of social work at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at U of T, looked at information collected from 645,000 Americans through the 2003 American Community Survey. Their study findings are published this month in the British journal Public Health.

Other key findings, which can be read online at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00333506 (under Articles in Press) include: .

• In states with greater inequality, the rich were also at a health disadvantage. Both rich and poor people living in states with unequal wealth distribution were more likely to have high-level disabilities than their counterparts living in states where income is distributed more equally.

........ Posted by: Tom      Read more         Source

November 13, 2007, 9:33 PM CT

Britney and K-Fed Doing It All Wrong

Britney Spears and ex-husband Kevin Federline continue to duke it out in the headlines over the custody of their two children. This week, a judge turned down Spears' plea for joint custody. Her visitations rights were previously reinstated and she is allowed to see her two boys three times a week during monitored visits. A University of Missouri-Columbia researcher and expert in divorce and stepfamily issues said this story should open everyone's eyes to the damage that can be inflicted on children who are caught in a custody war.

"They are doing almost everything wrong," said Larry Ganong, professor and co-chair of the Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) in the MU College of Human Environmental Sciences and professor in the Sinclair School of Nursing. "Interparental conflict is so damaging for kids. The message is that parents need to cooperate as much as possible, put the children's needs first, stifle anger and take the high road. I don't get the sense that Brit and K-Fed are doing that".

More than half of America's courts require some type of parental education for adults going through divorce or separation. Ganong is one of the co-creators of "Focus on Kids" - a program developed 12 years ago by HDFS faculty at MU and continually updated. It is used in a number of courts to educate parents on ways to put their differences aside for the sake of their children......... Posted by: Gina      Read more         Source

November 13, 2007, 9:17 PM CT

Supplemental Math Programs As Holiday Gift

Parents of school-aged children might want to think of giving their children an enduring holiday gift this year: enrollment in a supplemental mathematics program. While it can cost anywhere from $80 to $110 a month, the results of practicing mathematics nearly daily is rewarding to both students and parents. In fact, parents might be even bigger recipients of this gift than their children. While their children gain self-esteem and confidence, the parents very likely will feel a sense of relief and pride in their children's accomplishment.

Singapore, Saxon and Kumon are three popular such programs. A number of home-school practitioners use the first two, and Kumon, which involves daily practice and some tutoring, is popular with parents who feel their schools might be letting them down.

Dan Kimura, Ph.D., a senior professor of computer science and engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, opened St. Louis' first Kumon center in 1984, in large part because of his disappointment in the math education that his sons were getting. Mathematics is a major foundation of computer science, and Kimura, whose specialty is software programming, took action.

Begun in Kimura's hometown, Moriguchi, Japan, in 1958 by the late Toru Kumon, a math teacher who invented it to help his sons, Kumon math has more than four million students enrolled worldwide in 43 countries, nearly 180,000 in the United States. The method stresses repetition, speed, accuracy, individual pace, hard work and goal orientation in teaching mathematics......... Posted by: Jaison      Read more         Source

November 12, 2007, 9:33 PM CT

You'll spend more thinking about your bank account

It has long been assumed that consumers are good judges of affordability, but a new study reveals that how much youre willing to spend is influenced by whether you think about a larger pool of resources (such as your bank account) or a smaller pool (the cash in your wallet). Through a series of four experiments, scientists observed that this resource assessment also applies to food and time. Counting calories" Youre more likely to eat that slice of cake if you think about how a number of calories you have allotted for the week, rather than just for the day.

Whether a person can afford a particular unit of consumption depends not just on the price of consumption, but whether one can afford the purchase as well, explain Carey K. Morewedge (Carnegie Mellon University), Leif Holtzman (Digitas, Boston), and Nicholas Epley (University of Chicago). We suggest that thinking of large resource accounts makes the objective cost of an item seem subjectively less expensive by comparison, thereby increasing the likelihood of consumption.

In other words, people will spend more on an item when it seems like a small expense in the grand scheme of things. For example, in one study, shoppers entering a market were asked either about the contents of their wallet (to get then thinking on a smaller scale) or about whether they had specific types of financial accounts......... Posted by: Tom      Read more         Source

November 12, 2007, 9:16 PM CT

That friendly car is smiling at me

A forthcoming study from the Journal of Consumer Research looks at how consumers anthropomorphize products, endowing a car or a pair of shoes with human characteristics and personalities. The researchers, from the University of Toronto and the University of Chicago, find that people are more likely to attribute human qualities or traits to inanimate objects if the product fits with their expectations of relevant human qualities and are also more likely to positively evaluate an anthropomorphized item.

We sometimes see cars as loyal companions going so far as to name them. We argue with, cajole, and scold malfunctioning computers and engines, explain Pankaj Aggarwal (University of Toronto) and Ann L. McGill (University of Chicago). We find that if the product has a feature that is typically linked to a human prototype, then people are more likely to humanize the product, and also evaluate it more positively.

For example, the scientists observed that people are more likely to buy into the idea of a family of products if all the products are differently sized, with some products representing parents and others representing a teenager and a small kid.

Similarly, non-identical products presented as twins fared worse in evaluations than identical objects presented as twins. The scientists also observed that products with positive traits were better liked than products with rebellious or negative traits. In the study, identical looking objects presented as good twins were better liked than the same products presented as evil twins......... Posted by: Jim      Read more         Source

November 12, 2007, 8:58 PM CT

Big Five oil companies limit exploration

A study released recently by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy finds that the "Big Five" international oil companies (IOCs) are spending less money on oil exploration in real terms despite a four-fold increase in operating cash flow since the early part of 1990s. On the flip side, the study, "The International Oil Companies," finds that second-tier oil companies are spending more in exploration, positioning themselves to be in better shape when it comes to future oil reserves.

The analysis is based on Baker Institute research on investment expenditures by the IOCs, the next 20 largest U.S.-based oil firms and national oil companies (NOCs). Data were culled from U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings going back to 1995 and, in the case of NOCs, to news reports and other public data.

The study observed that the Big Five (ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips), used 56 percent of their increasing cash flow on share repurchases and dividends, which were good for investors in the short term but put at risk the companies long-term oil reserves.

The handwriting is on the wall. The oil majors are not replacing reserves, said Amy Myers Jaffe, co-author of the report and the Wallace S. Wilson fellow for Energy Studies at the Baker Institute. Its as if they are slowly liquidating their long-term asset base. They may see a declining rate of production over time and eventually that is bad news for both their shareholders and consumers......... Posted by: Tom      Read more         Source

November 8, 2007, 9:54 PM CT

New scoring system protects credit card transactions

As this years holiday season approaches, your credit card transactions may be a little more secure thanks to standards adopted by the payment card industry. The latest incarnation of these standards include the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Version 2 that was coauthored this year by scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and Carnegie Mellon University in collaboration with 23 other organizations.

When you make an electronic transactioneither swiping a card at a checkout counter or through a commercial Web siteyou enter personal payment information into a computer. That information is sent to a payment-card server, a computer system often run by the bank or merchant that sponsors the particular card. The server processes the payment data, communicates the transaction to the vendor, and authorizes the purchase.

As per NISTs Peter Mell, lead author of CVSS Version 2, a payment-card server is like a house with a number of doors. Each door represents a potential vulnerability in the operating system or programs. Attackers check to see if any of the doors are open, and if they find one, they can often take control of all or part of the server and potentially steal financial information, such as credit card numbers.

For every potential vulnerability, CVSS Version 2 calculates its risks on a scale from zero to 10, assesses how the vulnerability could compromise confidentiality (exposing private information such as credit card numbers), availability (could it be used to shut down the credit card system") and integrity (can it change credit card data"). The CVSS scores used by the credit card industry are those for the 28,000 vulnerabilities provided by the NIST National Vulnerability Database (NVD), sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security......... Posted by: Tom      Read more         Source