Notice To Industry: Structural Integrity Associates, Inc. Discover New Form Of Graphitization : http://ping.fm/Rhg9W
Design, not just threads, toughens spider web: study
google.comScientists said Wednesday they had unraveled the mystery of how spider webs can withstand multiple tears and even hurricane-force winds without collapsing.
The findings should be of keen interest to engineers searching for shock-resistant structural designs, they said.
The silk-like threads with which arachnids spin their traps are famously stronger than steel and tougher than Kevlar, but this alone does not explain how webs withstand, say, a gash from a fallen branch.
Once ripped, what keeps the whole web from falling apart?
Youngsters Should Join Innovative Scientific Research to Secure World Leadership: Deshmukh
Government of India
Ministry of Science & Technology
26-September-2011 17:35 IST
Youngsters Should Join Innovative Scientific Research to Secure World Leadership: Deshmukh
Be Globally Competitive to have Cutting Edge Advantage: Ashwani Kumar
Shri Vilas Rao Deshmukh, Union Minister of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences urged youngsters to join innovative scientific research in our country and take up the challenge of securing our leadership. Addressing at the celebration of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) here today, he referred the bill of Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR) in the Lok and expressed confidence that it will emerge as a world class organization to secure India’s leadership in tomorrow’s science. Shri Deshmukh said, “This would attract the best students to remain in the country and will enable them to out-compete and out-innovate the rest of the world.
Lauding the first flight of CNM5 – a 5 seater civil aircraft in the 1st week of this month, Shri Deshmukh congratulated CSIR for its design and development. The aircraft has been developed in partnership with Mahindra Aerospace Pvt. Ltd. “This success is a unique example of a public-private partnership in civil aviation which has brought pride to the country. CSIR has been contributing over the years not only directly to Indian science and technological developments but has been contributing in a very significant way in the programmes being run by other science departments as well, both in strategic and non-strategic sectors. CSIR is ushering in an innovation culture in India. It is now partnering with National Innovation Council to set up Cluster Innovation Centres,” he added.
Shri Deshmukh said, “As per Prime Minister”s instructions, CSIR has developed “CSIR@80: Vision and Strategy 2022” which is a road map for “New CSIR for New India”. CSIR receives the largest number of Indian patents and is leader in American patents awarded to India and utilization of them. It is already an accomplished national leader in high-end knowledge generation. These achievements are a significant addition to CSIR’s recent globally recognized achievements of its programmes namely, ‘Open Source Drug Discovery’ (OSDD). It is based on CSIR’s novel open innovation movement using crowd sourcing as a model. ‘CSIR-800’ a programme focused at bringing in S&T interventions for our people at the bottom of economic pyramid, and ‘Traditional Knowledge Digital Library’ to enable protection of our Traditional Knowledge.”
Shri Deshmukh suggested to institutes two new Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prizes in the domains of transdisciplinary research and innovation to mark 70th year of CSIR’s memorable journey.
The Minister congratulated winners of Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prizes and winners of CSIR Young Scientist Award. The Union Minister also conveyed birthday greetings to the Prime Minister of India who is also the President, CSIR, on behalf of the CSIR.
CSIR to receive over 150 million USD through milestone payments and royalties
Shri Ashwani Kumar, Minister of State for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences said, “The canvas of Indian Innovation System is fast changing. The research institutions and industry are collaborating more and more to develop the desired products in knowledge intensive domains. But we need to be globally competitive to have cutting edge advantage. CSIR is growing from strength to strength with each passing year. It’s contributions are helping people at the bottom of economic pyramid.
The Minister of State informed that CSIR has established a new line of research named Ayurgenomics which is an integrative approach of Ayurveda and Genomics for discovery of predictive markers for preventive and personized medicine. This has given a novel molecular framework for integration of these two disciplines. This accelerate discovery of markers for predictive and personalized medicine.He further said, “We need to create new platforms for innovation, nurture them and make them global. The OSDD programme is based on the realization that the current Intellectual Property based models of pharmaceutical innovation do not address the diseases of the poor such as Tuberculosis. OSDD has emerged as a new platform for innovation in the domain of healthcare.” CSIR-led ‘Team India’ consortium with global partnership has more than 4500 researchers from over 100 countries as registered participants. Enthused with the success of OSDD, CSIR has now launched Distributed Organic Chemical Synthesis Programme (DOCS) in open source mode.
Shri Ashwani Kumar informed, “CSIR has signed a unique agreement with Nostrum Pharmaceuticals Inc for licensing of new generation thrombolytic molecules. CSIR will be receiving over 150 million USD through various milestone payments and royalties. As per the ‘Legal Metrology Act-2009’ law which comes into force since 1st April, 2011, all the activities related to National Standards are the sole responsibility of CSIR- National Physical Laboratory.14 new National Innovation Universities are planned to be set up. National Innovation Council has already come into existence.”
Earlier Dr R A Mashelkar, FRS national Research Professor,CSIR Bhatnagar Fellow and President Global Research Alliance delivered Foundation Day Lecture. He talked about India’s capacity to become a super power at the age 75. He described the way from ‘knowlwdge to Saraswati to knowledge’.
CSIR Young Scientist Awards 2011, CSIR Technology Awards 2011CSIR Diamond Jubilee Invention Award for school Children 2010 and Prof. G N Ramachandran Gold Medal for Excellence in Biological Sciences and Technology were given away today.CSIR@80: Vision and Strategy 2022 was released by Shri Deshmukh.Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize 2011 were declared today.
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The Unemployment Crisis Is Looking More Structural Every Day
theatlantic.comTo say that unemployment is structural is to say that there is something deeper afoot. The economy is changing in fundamental ways and the workers of yesterday may simply be unable to compete in the world of today. They don’t have the right skills, the right training, perhaps even the right temperament for a globalized workforce.
(by Karl Smith)
Unemployment: Structure or Demand?
There was a pretty outrageous (not meaning they’re wrong) guest post on Naked Capitalism yesterday called: “Obama Thinks that High Unemployment is Okay” with the overall idea that the wave of people saying that the recession is structural are dead wrong and that its basically only because of the lack of aggregate demand. There are some pretty big hitters mentioned in the piece too: Larry Summers and Christina Romer - who explain how: “We wondered where this could be coming from”.
Instead of listen to the argument in the piece, which is frankly more inflammatory than informative, let’s look at the citations of why this was “proven”. By saying that, “unemployment is not a good sign”, they’re making a pretty straw man argument, but let’s look at their evidence:
Here are the articles that are cited and their gist:
- Questions the Fed’s structural argument as trying to conceal its interest to use unemployment to reduce inflation pressures of its quantitative easing.
- Dept. of Labor reports show largest job growth (in #jobs) are low-skilled in areas of retail, food prep, and so on.
- “If employers were having a hard time finding qualified workers to fill job openings, you’d think that any workers who are qualified would be snapped right up.”
- “Geographic unemployment” is real.
- “Employers are picky”
- This article fills in a lot of detail from the one above, but here’s the highlights.
- Controversy: Is unemployment is high along with job vacancy (Fed claimed) - that means we’ve got structural unemployment. Economists delve in.
- Mention of revaluation of the Beveridge Curve - which is the relationship between unemployment and job vacancy - which is a little haywire right now: [chart] note the later years.
- Fed has bad job opening numbers, when corrected, they show little of this mis-match effect.
- Note: This was written in Sept 2010, after the adjustment controversy.
- Diagnosis: Housing bubble pop lead to decrease in consumer demand vis-a-vis “wealth”. “The economy is operating far below its potential output.”
- Cure: We need faster growth to generate demand / jobs.
- Interesting look at manufacturing productivity: showing that it’s experienced little technological investment and the nearly 7% productivity gains aren’t really structural - many people working harder to keep their job.
- Construction unemployment: 25% of the unemployed, however their position is that they’re demand unemployed and that those jobs will return - I’m a bit skeptical, but that’s a good argument for why it’s not predominant.
- Job openings to # unemployed (they’ve got a great graph) showed 2010 levels at ~6x more seekers than openings.
- The paper fully anticipated all of the arguments from the current controversy - very interesting and worth the read.
- I have a lot problems with this article - it’s not too thorough, and seems a little inflammatory. Let’s look closer:
- Their Diagnosis:
— Offsourcing - This is a real way of gaining productivity - we get things for less than we can make - yes that leads to short term jobs, but that’s a frictional unemployment issue - not demand based.
— Big mergers kill jobs - This also improves internal productivity, so I don’t get why this is bad for employment reason - more issues about concentrating power / risk than anything.
— Fed interests are for higher, inflation stopping, unemployment - similar to other’s view.
— Inequality is worse: This is a structural problem if the economy produces crap jobs - right?
My Conclusion: This shouldn’t have been cited - it contributes nothing to the argument.
- Note: This article is behind a artifice of artificial scarcity paywall.
- Note: This was written in August 2010, after this adjustment controversy.
Overall Conclusions:
I have to say that I’m somewhat surprised that all the data points this way, but I think it’s convincing enough for me to adjust my position / thought process to see that demand issues are still at the center of short-term economics problems. The whole thing has me questioning many of the assumptions for economics in general and also some other thoughts:
- Economics says we need full employment to get more production, but GDP is not created equal. You can’t tell me the productive value of medicine isn’t higher per dollar than for luxury handbags. If this is true, how do we really evaluate society utility?
- Most new jobs are unskilled according to the DoLabor data - so we’re definitely heading into both areas that can probably be easily automated and also areas that encourage greater concentration of wealth.
- Short-term demand issues probably aren’t indicative the lack of evidence for long-term structural issues. I.e. if we’ve got low-skilled jobs coming, this points to both decreases in the per capita productivity (because I can’t imagine they’re adding a ton of value) and also the increased risk for those jobs to be automated.
![[chart]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_beveridge_2004_through_fall_2010.gif){kind=link}