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Irven DeVore: October 7, 1934 – September 23, 2014

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I heard yesterday that my friend and former advisor Irven DeVore died. He was important, amazing, charming, difficult, harsh, brilliant, fun, annoying. My relationship to him as an advisee and a friend was complex, important to me for many years, and formative. For those who don’t know he was instrumental in developing several subfields of anthropology, including behavioral biology, primate behavioral studies, hunter-gatherer research, and even ethnoarchaeology.

He was a cultural anthropologist who realized during his first field season that a) he was not cut out to be a cultural anthropologist and b) most of the other cultural anthropologists were not either. Soon after he became Washburn’s student and independently invented the field study of complex social behavior in primates (though some others were heading in that direction at the same time), producing his famous work on the baboons of Kenya’s Nairobi National Park. For many years, what students learned about primate behavior, they learned from that work.

Later he and Richard Lee, along with John Yellen, Alison Brooks, Henry Harpending, and others started up the study of Ju/’hoansi Bushmen along the Namibian/Botswana border. One of the outcomes of that work was the famous Werner Gren conference and volume called “Man the Hunter.” That volume has two roles in the history of anthropology. First, it launched modern forager studies. Second, it became one of the more maligned books in the field of Anthropology. I have yet to meet a single person who has a strong criticism of that book that is not based on having not read it.

For many years, much of what students learned about human foragers, they learned from that work.

DeVore supported the rise of Sociobiology but his version of it was nuanced and investigatory, not dogmatic and oversimplified as the subfield eventually came to be. He fought with Lewontin though they essentially agreed on salient points. He launched a number of outstanding researchers mainly in primate studies, and well understood the problem of sexism in the field. So, many of his proteges were women, and many of those are now household names (if you live in a house of anthropologists). Barbara Smutts, Nadine Peacock, and Sarah Hrdy for example. Karen Strier holds the Irv Devore Chair at Madison. Eventually he hooked up with Bob Trivers, who was busy re-inventing the newly invented Behavioral Biology. Cosmides and Tooby were his students as well and he was their champion. He also supported the work of Daly and Wilson.

For years he taught one or another version of “Sex”, the nickname for his course on human behavioral biology. Imagine a course taught for decades, a required course with 500 students a year, at a small but elite college like Harvard. How many students learned what they learned about human behavior from DeVore? Those of us who were involved in “Sex” saw this now and then: a Hollywood movie with one of Irv’s examples from the animal world worked into the script, or a novel with such a reference, etc. … yup, the writer or director was one of those students.

One of my first meetings with DeVore was at the home of David Maybury-Lewis, down the street from Irv’s house. DeVore pulled me aside and assigned me to be the head teaching fellow for that course. I was horrified. He forced me into the job. I did it poorly, since I was an archaeologist with virtually zero background in the field and most of the other TA’s (about eight of them) were advanced PhD students or post docs. Eventually I learned the ropes but I think I managed to avoid being head TA ever again (Jay Phelan, my Suaboya, was not so lucky, that became his job for many years). I later served as Irv’s understudy, when he was getting a series of brain surgeries. I waited in the wings to step onto the lecture hall floor in case he succumbed. That never happened, but I did take a couple of the lectures while he was in hospital. I gave his lectures as he would have given them, including jokes and personal stories (but with the personal stories in third person). When he returned he re-told all the jokes and personal stories in case I had messed them up. Like I said, he could be annoying. But I digress.

By the time I was on DeVore’s teaching staff, the Harvard Ituri Project, started by Bob Bailey and Peter Ellison, was well underway and I was sent off to do my PhD fieldwork there. That project was also championed by DeVore, he was in the field there for a while.

DeVore had a major impact on Harvard’s Anthropology department. He was mainly responsible for the division of that department into autonomous wings, which eventually led to the separation of the biological anthropology wing from the rest of the Department. This is important because the entire field in the US was under similar pressures. When Harvard “split” into wings, all the other departments were free to ask themselves if they should too. I remember the very famous head of a very major anthro department visiting to see what a split department looked like. Over subsequent years some split, some entrenched.


In homage to an inspiration of this post, I provide this link to the secret, generally unseen obituary of Professor Irven Boyd DeVore.


DeVore was instrumental in shaping the faculty of the whole department, but mainly the biological anthropology wing. It is fair to say that David Pilbeam, Peter Ellison, and Richard Wrangham are on that faculty in large part because of Irv.

As I say, my relationship with Irv was complicated, but it was good. I was his last PhD student, though he had a hand in the careers of other later students. I was his confidant (one among others) and he was mine. We often met up at the end of the day in his office to debrief, he’d have a drink. He kept his scotch in a fake book flask. Then we would leave together, and he’d drive me home, or I’d drive him home, or we’d go to his place to hang out.

Of all of these things that happened in his career, the research and the effects on the field of Anthropology, his wife Nancy DeVore was as much a part as he. Irv’s deployment of his advisory duties often involved Nancy. Nancy taught me a lot about writing and editing, for example. Over the last few years, his daughter, Claire, has taken on the difficult burden of caring for a difficult person having a difficult time. Claire is as unique and potent a person as her father. I love both of you, Nancy and Claire.

I’ll probably say more at another time. That’s all I’ve got now. Meanwhile, here is an obit at the NYT.


Photo from AnthroPhoto, a Nancy and Claire DeVore project.


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Climate Science Ice Bucket Challenge The Complete Collection

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I am going to try to keep all the climate science ice bucket challenges here as they occur. At present there are quite a few individuals who have not yet answered the challenge. I’m sure they will. Some of them, in the Northern Hemisphere, may be waiting for it to get colder so the act becomes more meaningful.

Anyway, here’s what we’ve got now. If I’m missing someone, please add a link in the comments!

It all started with Andy Lee Robinson “Arctic Sea Ice Death Spiral” challenge…

Andy donates to the Dark Snow Project and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, challenges David Rose, Paul Beckwith, and Jason Box.


Jason Box “Arctic Sea Ice Bucket Challenge” Dark Snow Project

donates to ALS, challenges Peter Sinclair, Dane Nuccitelli, John Cook

Peter Sinclair, sternly, of “This is not Cool”, for the Yale Forum on Climate Change…

donates to ALS, the Dark Snow Project and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. Challenges: Everyone! Plus, Jeff Masters, Rob Honeycutt and Mauri Pelto

Dana Nuccitelli of the Guardian

… donates to ALS, the Dark Snow Project and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. Challenges Michael Mann, Katharine Hayhoe, and Kevin Cowtan.

Mauri Pelto, doing a stylish striptease…

…donates to Challenges Tom Hammond, Olier Grah, Megan Pelto.

Kevin Cowtan, imported Ice to carry out the challenge…

… and donates to ALS, the Dark Snow Project and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. Challenges Mark Richardson, Robert Way, and Catie Murphy.

John Cook of Skeptical Science …

… donates to ALS, the Dark Snow Project and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. He challenges Stephan Lewandowsky, John Bruno and Gavin Cawley.

Stephan Lewandowsky appears to get away…

… with meeting the challenge and not getting wet. Or does he?


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There may be over 10 billion of us by 2100

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Climate change may be the existential threat, but underlying this is, of course, population size. And this is a problem that never seems to go away. There are of course two ways, broadly speaking, to limit population growth aside from draconian policies governing reproduction (such as China’s One Child policy). One is sometimes called the demographic transition. This is when a combination of factors including so-called modernization which may involve increase quality of health care in combination with increased social equality lead to lower birth rates. The other is when things go badly wrong and interruptions in the food supply, warfare genocide, and epidemic disease simply cull out large parts of the population.

The following chart shows the effect of two major famines on the overall population increase in Ethiopia since 1950. If you squint and look at it kinda sideways you can see the slowing of population increase during this period. But really, it made little difference.

Screen Shot 2014-09-20 at 8.44.05 AM

And here is the population of Rwanda since 1950, with the 1994 Genocide marked in. Here the event is much more clearly indicated but again, over the long term, there is not that much of an effect, just a delay in reaching some high future number.

Screen Shot 2014-09-20 at 8.49.48 AM

Until recently, experts on population had estimated that world population would reach about 9 billion by around 2050, and then level off. But a new study by the UN indicates that population is likely to increase to more than 10 billion or so by the end of the century. The study came out in this week’s issue of Science (Gerland, P., Raftery, A. E., Šev, H., Li, N., Gu, D., Spoorenberg, T., … Heilig, G. K. (2014). Reports World population stabilization unlikely this century, (September), 1–5. doi:10.1038/42935, with additional information here). Here is what the projection looks like for the world, but you can go to the link and see the projections for each country, various regions, and projections for other demographic values.

Screen Shot 2014-09-20 at 8.56.57 AM

From the Abstract:

The United Nations recently released population projections based on data until 2012 and a Bayesian probabilistic methodology. Analysis of these data reveals that, contrary to previous literature, world population is unlikely to stop growing this century. There is an 80% probability that world population, now 7.2 billion, will increase to between 9.6 and 12.3 billion in 2100. This uncertainty is much smaller than the range from the traditional UN high and low variants. Much of the increase is expected to happen in Africa, in part due to higher fertility and a recent slowdown in the pace of fertility decline. Also, the ratio of working age people to older people is likely to decline substantially in all countries, even those that currently have young populations.

The new study is done differently than most earlier studies. According to Patrick Gerland, a UN demographer, “Earlier projections were strictly based on scenarios, so there was no uncertainty. This work provides a more statistically driven assessment that allows us to quantify the predictions, and offer a confidence interval that could be useful in planning.” Also earlier studies made unrealistic assumptions about fertility, allowing the entire world to have a higher or lower fertility to develop a range of outcomes. Author Adrian Raftery notes, ““In a given year and country the fertility rate might be half a child higher, but the probability that it would be half a child higher in all countries in all years in the future is very low.”

We need to be working towards a more rapid demographic transition, which in large part involved education of girls and access to good health care so babies survive better, and good reproductive services so women can no be so easily coerced into being baby factories.


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What will this winter be like in North America?

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The Polar Vortex hurt. We who lived in it, through it, with it, are like farm animals that got zapped by the electric fence a couple of times … notice all that long grass growing by the fence. Stay away. It hurt! So we are worried that this will happen again.

It is a reasonable worry, from a scientific point of view. The Polar Vortex visitation last winter was the result of changes to trade winds and jet streams that has characterized our weather for the last few years. One of the big questions on my mind is this: Are wavy jet streams and corresponding changes in the distribution of excessive rainfall and drought likely to become spatially patterned? In other words, is it likely that when the Polar Vortex wanders that it will tend to wander to the same small set of locations, like Siberia or North America? So far this seems to be at least partly true. The drought in California has not been maintained because of a lack of rainfall at that latitude, but rather, a lack of certain seasonal precipitation (winter snows) at that longitude, because of the oft-cited “ridiculously resilient ridge” which is actually one of several standing waves in the polar jet stream that shunts wet air around California, to places the Midwest. It is conceivable that the Polar Vortex, as part of the climate change induced “new normal,” will wanter off-pole and onto a landmass (either Eurasia or North America) often-ish, from now on, or until continued global warming results in some other pattern which we’ll probably call “New Normal 2.0”.

This is a question I’ve asked various scientists who are working on this problem. The answer I’ve gotten so far has been, paraphrased, “Yeah, I don’t know, maybe, we’re thinking about that. Get back to you later.”

But there is hope. I’ve put links to three places you can go for more discussion and information below. Here’s the tl;dr. The National Weather Service does a very good job of predicting what winter will be like in North America, but the accuracy of that prediction, unsurprisingly, drops off month by month. So the current prediction is probably pretty good for November/December, but as January and February come along, what is predicted now may be off. With that caveat, these are the salient predictions:

1) There will not be a Polar Vortex excursion into North America. Probably. The thing is, if this is a recent phenomenon and increasing in likelihood, the predictions may be off, but there are good reasons to believe they are not. Don’t assume the Polar Vortex will visit us, but don’t sell your wool pants at that last garage sale of the year.

2) California may actually get some rasonable precipitation this winter. It is hard to say if it will be drought-breaking rain, but it may help.

3) Although winter seems to be starting early this year (with many inches of snow having fallen or about to fall on the Front Range, the Dakotas, etc.) the overall prediction is a somewhat warmer than average winter for most of North America.

4) The Southwest, California, Texas, North-Central Mexico will have a bit more moisture than average, but other than Pacific coastal Mexico, not a lot more. That won’t translate into huge snowfalls except at high elevations. The middle of the country, from Montana to western Ohio and Michigan, south to a line running from southern Idaho across to Florida, including the Southeast, will have average precip. So, Minnesotans may see early snow if it remains cool, but this will not be an exceptionally snowy winter. Less than usual moisture is predicted for Kentucky, Ohio, western Pensylvaina, parts of New York and most of New England. But, this is only a small amount, so don’t sell your snow blower at that garage sale.

Parts of the Pacific Northwest and inland across to western Montana may be a bit dryer than usual.

Overall, temperature wise, no region is expected to be especially cold, mostly somewhat warm. The regions of Canada and Alaska along the Arctic Circle will be very warm (relatively … so many degrees below zero instead of many more degrees below zero) as we would expect with “Arctic Amplification.” Moisture levels, overall, are not going to be extreme in either direction anywhere, though the dry in the Northwest may be noticeable.

In other words, the average person’s perception of weather, which varies from reality a great deal, will include the actual realized variation, if the predictions hold up.

The NWS predictions can be found via this page.

Eric Holthaus has a discussion of the coming winter here.

Paul Douglas of Weather Nation has more here, with a lot of other info relevant to Minnesota.


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That Facebook Book Meme Thing

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My friend Iain Davidson tagged me with the facebook novel meme. Here are the rules: Oh, hell, never mind the rules. I wanted to provide links to the books so I decided to do this as a blog post which I’ll paste on my facebook page (and of course tag some unlucky facebook friend).

Here it is. I broke some rules. So what?

Moment in the Sun: Report on the Deteriorating Quality of the American Environment by Dr. Robert Reinow was my Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. As a child I watched Reinow’s Sunrise Semester course on TV a couple of times. He would give a lecture on some manner or other by which humans were ruining the environment. Then he and his wife would put on a skit demonstrating it satirically. I especially remember the Reinow family sitting around to eat a nice dinner, and Mrs. Reinow sneaking over to the stove, opening the top of the pot in which the stew cooked, and dumping in copious quantities of DDT. “This is what we are doing to ourselves!” One day I started a project. I had just started driving and I wanted to visit every public road between Rout 9W and the Hudson River from Albany south at least a couple of counties distance. Early on during that project I came across Holly Hock Hollow Road. It sounded familiar. I drove up the road, and along it were various signs made to look like they were written by elves or gnomes, about this and that aspect of nature or the environment. Finally I came to an unoccupied (at the moment, but lived in) cottage and small complex of outbuildings. I had come to the Reinow estate. I went back a couple of times later but never managed to run into them. The book, which is the point of this paragraph, was prescient. It predicted pretty much everything that happened over the 20 years or so after it was written, from acid rain to DDT. The book made me an angry supporter of the environment, like Reinow was.

I had messed around with the Sherlock Holmes Canon here and there for a long time then one day decided to read them all cover to cover. Then I did it again. Twice. I don’t know why, I just like it.

Karl Hiassen wrote Tourist Season and then he wrote a bunch of other books, fiction, not children’s fiction, with a guy named Skink in them. I use those attributes to define the “Skink Canon” though in truth Skink himself is a relatively minor character in some of the books, and is never the main character. But he is in all of the books. The protagonist and antagonist in his novels shift though they are often similar to each other while Skink stays in place. In the swamps. Where he lives. I guess I like the Skink canon because if I lived in Florida I’d probably be Skink by now.

Everybody seems to either love or hate Anne Rice, and when they do, it is all about the vampires. The vampires are nice, and I would certainly included those stories on a longer list of books, but less appreciated but in my view better is the series related to the Mayfare Witches: The Witching Hour, Lasher, and Taltos. Creepy weird good stories. Take notes, you’ll need them. Maybe a nice genealogy program will help.

Rita Mae Brown wrote a number of novels exploring both related and unrelated themes in the same setting (though sometimes varying the century). This includes a long series co-authored with her cat. Rubyfruit Jungle is her famous, break-through, prize winning work. Amid this larger set of works is a trilogy, if memory serves correctly but I may be missing a piece (and they were written out of order but I’m giving you the historical order of the story here) that I take to represent her larger work. They are: Six of One, Loose Lips, and Bingo.

Marge Piercy’s Gone to Soldiers is an historical novel set during World War II following several different individuals of varying degrees (including zero) of connection to each other.

I read Lord of the Rings when I was too young to totally get it but I enjoyed it. (It was about the second or third “adult” thing I read). Then I read it again when I was older and then one more time. Then, when I as in the Congo with a really bad case of Malaria I read a good part of it again and the story entered my delusional state, which was … interesting. I survived both. I’ll include Hobbit in with the trilogy because it fits.

About the same time I was reading Lord of the Rings, I read The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science (in my case, two paper back volumes, one on physical science, the other biology). It is how I got introduced to science, sort of (I was actually introduced earlier but this was my first systematic learning of science, insofar as reading a book serves in this way). The science I was reading was a bit out of date but to a kid one digit in age that hardly mattered. Black holes were a conjecture, the big bang as I recall somewhat more accepted. Many particles had not been “found” but that search was very much underway. The biology section sticks with me less probably because I’ve gone ahead and unlearned all of the 1960s biology, since I’m kind of a biologist.

When people ask me what novel to read, I often say “Hey, did you read The Egyptian by Mika Waltari yet? No? Read it!

If you haven’t gotten around to Mastering Regular Expressions yet than you are missing out.

I read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in the seventh grade, and it was quite life changing.

I read Deschooling Society (70 Edition) in the ninth grade. It was quite revealing.

I dropped out of school in the 10th grade. But that’s another story and there is no book.

One day my sister said, “You’re kind of a freak, here, read this,” and handed me Welcome to the Monkey House. It was my first adult fiction. I didn’t find it freaky. That must prove I was a freak. Soon after I read Fahrenheit 451, then everything by Bradbury and Vonnegut (available at the time) along with, as mentioned Lord of the Rings. So that is how I got my start on literature.

A Naturalist’s Voyage Round the World: The Voyage of the Beagle is the most revealing of Darwin, within a reasonable volume of words. I don’t know if it changed me but it has stuck with me and I refer to it often.

Although A Perfect Spy might be a perfect Le Carré book, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone who hadn’t already read the Smiley canon. And, really George Smiley is where it is at: Call for the Dead, A Murder of Quality,The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Looking Glass War, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Honorable Schoolboy, Smiley’s People, and so on (there are about three others).

Sungudogo, the story of a pair of adventurers traveling across the Congo in search of an elusive primate that may or may not exist, reminds me of a lot of things I’ve done myself. Brilliant novel.


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Giant Semiaquatic Predatory Dinosaur

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It is called Spinosaurus aegyptiacus but it sounds a bit more like Godzilla. Spinosaurus is a theropod dinosaur (that’s the groups birds evolved within) found in what is now NOrth Africa, between about 112 and 97 million years ago. It was first discovered about one century ago, though those bones were destroyed during WW II. Spinosaurus aegyptiacus might be the only species of this genus, or there may be two. It is probably the largest carnivours dinosaur, up to 18 meters in length. Up top of the post is the picture from Wikipedia. Although the head looks a lot like a crock, you can see the overall Godzilla-esque body.

A paper out today in science presents a detailed analysis of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus‘s aquatic adaptations. Writing for Science, Michael Balter notes:

Researchers have long debated whether dinosaurs could swim, but there has been little direct evidence for aquadinos. Some tantalizing hints have appeared, however, in claimed “swim tracks” made by the bellies of dinos in Utah and oxygen isotopes indicating possible aquatic habitats in a group of dinosaurs called spinosaurs. Now, a research team working in Morocco has found the most complete skeleton yet of a giant carnivore called Spinosaurus [which] confirm that Spinosaurus was bigger than Tyrannosaurus rex, but also show that it had evolutionary adaptations—ranging from pedal-like feet to a nostril far back on the head to high bone density like that of hippos—clearly suited for swimming in lakes and rivers.

The scientists describe Spinosaurus aegyptiacus as “semiaquatic.” It’s pelvis is small, hind limbs short, and as mentioned, its limb bones are solid to act as balast. It’s hind limbs may have acted as quasi-flippers while in water. The dorsal sail “may have been enveloped in skin that functioned primarily for display on land and in water.” They say nothing about its ability to exhale nuclear fire-breath. Perhaps that will be ascertained with further study.

Here are some of the bones and a semi-reconstructed skeleton:

F2.large

Of related interest:

<li><a href="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2014/09/05/titanic-fearless-dinosaur-unearthed/">Titanic Fearless Dinosaur Unearthed</a></li>

<li><a href="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2014/09/03/flying-dinosaurs-a-new-book-on-the-dinosaur-bird-link/">Flying Dinosaurs: A New Book on the Dinosaur Bird Link</a></li>

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Has #Ebola Death Toll Surpassed Malaria in West Africa?

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In the earlier days of the West African Ebola outbreak, it was not uncommon to hear people note that we should not panic about Ebola because, after all, far more people are killed from Malaria than Ebola. This is of course an irrelevant argument. That is like telling a person who has lost their family in a tragic airplane accident that it isn’t so bad because, after all, far more people die in car crashes than aircraft crashes. For example, on August 5th, James Bell write in the Guardian, in a piece called Concerned about Ebola? You’re worrying about the wrong disease:

Since the Ebola outbreak began in February, around 300,000 people have died from malaria, while tuberculosis has likely claimed over 600,000 lives. Ebola might have our attention, but it’s not even close to being the biggest problem in Africa right now. Even Lassa fever, which shares many of the terrifying symptoms of Ebola (including bleeding from the eyelids), kills many more than Ebola – and frequently finds its way to the US.

I’m not picking on James Bell here. A lot of people said things like this, and the facts are true, though as I said, there is almost always (actually, in exactly N-1 scenarios within a given domain of scenarios) an argument that goes like this, and it really isn’t particularly relevant unless one is tasked with dividing up a fixed set of resources that will be used for a fixed set of problems. Resources rarely come that way and problems are rarely solved that way. As I pointed out earlier, consider the thought experiment where you have $10,000,000 that you want to give to either developing an Ebola vaccine, or a Malaria vaccine. Since billions have been spent on developing a Malaria vaccine and there still isn’t one, your donation would be a drop in the bucket. Retrospectively, it would be equivalent to something like the combined costs of couriers and mail by researchers working on a Malaria vaccine over the last few decades. Or the cost of coffee and donuts in the break room. Or conference travel fees. Or something like that. The point is, a bunch of millions of dollars might actually produce an Ebola vaccine given the starting point we have now, or at least, move us a good deal in that direction.

But now, we can ask if Ebola in the countries that are heavily affected right now is still “minor” compared to Malaria.

This is a matter of numbers and the numbers are hard to come by. James Bell notes that between February and July, inclusively, there had been over 300,000 malaria deaths, I assume world wide. So the comparison is not really relevant; we should be looking at what is happening specifically in, for instance, Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone (or the three combined perhaps). Comparing world wide figures to a regional outbreak is a bit like reducing the Malaria death rate by shifting from numbers from countries that have endemic Malaria to include the global population.

It is hard to know how many people die of malaria every year, and the quality of the data varies considerably from country to country. A fairly recent study (here’s a discussion of it) suggests that an older estimate of 600,000 deaths per year should be doubles to 1,200,000 deaths per years. Having worked and lived in a region with some of the worst malaria (measured numerous ways) for several years, I can easily accept a doubling of numbers. If we assume that 1.2 million is right, by the way, Bell’s number of 300,000 is actually conservative.

Using data from that malaria study and WHO’s Ebola data, we can make some comparisons. I’m including all the information so you can check my work.

Here we have data from Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. The population number and malaria deaths per year are both from the aforementioned study and pertain to 2012. Then I divided malaria deaths per year by 12 to get a monthly value. I’m more comfortable working in months than years because an Ebola outbreak is normally short lived, and the number of deaths changes dramatically from month to month.

Following this we have the total number of Ebola deaths per country (summed in the right hand column as are the above mentioned data) and the approximate number of months of the outbreak. Then, the total deaths divided by the number of months. This constitutes a low-ball estimate of deaths per month from Ebola for the given expanding outbreak. Here we can see that in the comparison between Malaria and Ebola, it is not clear that one is a greater threat than the other (142:92, 49:67, 145:144).

Then we have the August-only monthly number of deaths. Here we dee that Ebola is huge compared to Malaria. So, back when people were saying “Malaria is worse,” in late July and early August, Ebola was starting to prove them wrong.

The last two numbers are calculated for all three countries combined. Here we are going out on a limb, and it is better statistically to crawl out on a thicker limb than a thinner limb. I made some estimates here, and those numbers conform to what is being talked about by WHO and others. If Ebola continues to spread at its current rate the daily number of new cases could be between 150 and 300 by the beginning of January. I state these as low vs high estimates, but actually, they are both conservative. Multiplying this by 30 days in a month, and dividing by 2 to approximate the ca 50% mortality rate, we have conservative numbers for Ebola that leave Malaria in the dust. Even if the doubling of estimated Malaria death rates should be doubled again, Ebola will be a bigger factor than Malaria.

Liberia Guinea Sierra Leone Total
Population 3,954,977 10,068,721 5,696,471 19,720,169
Malaria Deaths Per Year 1706 586 1734 4,026
Malaria Deaths Per Month 142 49 145 336
Ebola Deaths Total 508 400 461 1,369
Months of outbreak 6 6 3
Monthly average Ebola deaths 92 67 144 303
August Ebola Deaths 644 148 224 1,016
Estimated Janurary Ebola Deaths (low) 4,500
Estimated Janurary Ebola Deaths (high) 9,000

So that is why we should stop saying that Ebola is not Malaria, so relax about Ebola.

More on Ebola:


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Polar Vortex Begets Baby Boom?

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Nine months after the Polar Vortex covered a good part of American with freezing cold, there appears to be a baby boom, according to one unverified news story:

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – It’s been nine months since our bitter cold winter ended.
Now, delivery rooms are bracing themselves for a Polar Vortex baby boom.
All 39 maternity rooms and the NICU are full this weekend at a Des Moines hospital.
Doctors believe the baby bonanza is a result of the polar vortex last December and January.
In case you forgot, it was one of the snowiest and coldest winters on record.
August and September are usually the busiest months for maternity wards, draw your own conclusions why.

I’m holding out for more data.


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Titanic Fearless Dinosaur Unearthed

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I’m sure you’ve heard. The most complete skeleton of a titanosaur, a newly named species, Dreadnoughtus schrani, is being reported from Argentina.

It is not a bird. I mention that because we’ve been talking about how birds are dinosaurs lately (see:”Honey, I shrunk the dinosaurs” and “Flying Dinosaurs: A new book on the dinosaur bird link.”).

Dreadnoughtus schrani is a sauropod. Brontosaurus, if it existed, would be a sauropod. These are the dinosaurs with the little heads, long necks, and long tails. In cartoons they are sometimes called “long-necks.” Dreadnoughtus schrani is, as mentioned, a titanosaur, a particularly large long neck.

How does this relate to the other dinosaurs? The dinosaurs are part of a really big group of organisms that includes crocodiles, pterosaurs (those flying things) and so on. Within this group are the proper dinosaurs which you can think of as being divided into three groups. One group is the Ornithischia, named from the greek for “birdlike.” These are not birds either, but their hips somewhat resemble bird hips. (Birds are “lizard hipped” dinosaurs, which completes the paleoirony.) The Ornithischia are separate from the other two groups which are the Sauropods and the Theropods. The Theropods include Tyrannosaurus rex and pigeons. The Sauropods includes the Brontosaurus-like dinosaurs, though of course, there is no such thing as Brontosaurus. Because people who name dinosaurs are, essentially, sadistic.

Anyway, Dreadnoughtus schrani is estimated to have been about 26 meters (85 feet) long. So if you live in a typical city lot it could eat the bushes on your front lawn while knocking over your garage out back with its tail. It would have weighted about 59 metric tons. That’s about 65 regular tons. Nobody really knows what a ton is unless you are in certain professions, so that’s about 33 cars, or about 70 head of cattle. So, the average American could replace the usual meat in their diet with meat from one well fed Dreadnoughtus schrani for about two centuries. Give or take. This is all based on the one specimen found in Argentina. But, that individual was not full grown. So, wow. I’m not sure if Dreadnoughtus schrani is the biggest sauropod, as there are others in this size range.

The specimen is about 45% complete as a skeleton, but about 70% of the bones in the body are represented. Unfortunately the head is missing. But really, where could it be? I’m sure they’ll find it if they keep looking!

Titanosaurs were the major large dinos during the Mesozoic (252 – 66 mya) in the southern continents. This particular find dates to the Upper Cretaceous, the latest part of the Mesozoic.

From the paper:
srep06196-f2

(A) Reconstructed skeleton and body silhouette in left lateral view with preserved elements in white. (B) Left scapula and coracoid in lateral view. (C) Sternal plates in ventral view. (D) Left forelimb (metacarpus reconstructed) in anterior view. (E) Left pelvis (ilium partially reconstructed) in lateral view. (F) Left hind limb in anterior view (metatarsus and pes partially reconstructed and reversed from right). (G) Transverse ground thin section of humeral shaft, showing heavy secondary remodelling (arrow indicates extent of dense osteon formation), a thick layer of well-vascularized fibrolamellar bone, and a lack of lines of arrested growth or an external fundamental system. Abbreviations: acet, acetabulum; acf, acromial fossa; acp, acromial process; acr, acromial ridge; ast, astragalus; cc, cnemial crest; cof, coracoid foramen; cor, coracoid; dpc, deltopectoral crest; fem, femur; fhd, femoral head; fib, fibula; flb, fibrolamellar bone; gl, glenoid; hum, humerus; il, ilium; ilp, iliac peduncle; isc, ischium; isp, ischial peduncle; lt, lateral trochanter; mtI, metatarsal I; mtII, metatarsal II; of, obturator foramen; pop, postacetabular process; prp, preacetabular process; pu, pedal ungual; pub, pubis; pup, pubic peduncle; rac, radial condyle; rad, radius; sc, scapula; scb, scapular blade; sr, secondary remodelling; tib, tibia; tpp, tuberosity on preacetabular process; ul, ulna; ulc, ulnar condyle. Scale bars equal 1?m in (A) to (F) and 1?mm in (G). (Skeletal reconstruction by L. Wright, with G. Schultz.)

The name means “Fearless-creature guy-who-funded-expedition.” According to the authors, this is specifically where the genus name comes from:

Dreadnought (Old English), fearing nothing; genus name alludes to the gigantic body size of the taxon (which presumably rendered healthy adult individuals nearly impervious to attack) and the predominant battleships of the early 20th century (two of which, ARA [Armada de la República Argentina] Rivadavia and ARA Moreno, were part of the Argentinean navy). Species name honours the American entrepreneur Adam Schran for his support of this research.

For more information:

The Scientific Report article (which appears to be Open Access): A Gigantic, Exceptionally Complete Titanosaurian Sauropod Dinosaur from Southern Patagonia, Argentina

An open access paper on how this type of dinosaur even walked: March of the Titans: The Locomotor Capabilities of Sauropod Dinosaurs.

Michael Balter with Science Mag: Giant dinosaur unearthed in Argentina

Mr. Dinosaur Brian Switek: Enormous New Dinosaur as Formidable as Its Namesake Battleship

Ian Sample at The Guardian, including a video: Battleship beast: colossal dinosaur skeleton found in southern Patagonia

Francie Diep at Scientific American: New “Dreadnought” Dinosaur Most Complete Specimen of a Giant


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Important new meta-study of sea level rise in the US.

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This is not a peer reviewed meta-study, but a meta-study nonetheless. Reuters has engaged in a major journalistic effort to examine sea level rise and has released the first part (two parts, actually). It is pretty good; I only found one paragraph to object to, and I’ll ignore that right now.

There are two reasons this report is important. First, it documents something about sea level rise that I’ve been trying to impress on people all along. The effects of sea level rise do not end at one’s perceived position of a new shoreline. Here’s what I mean.

Suppose you are standing on a barrier island, and your feet are on a grassy sandy knoll 10 feet above high tide. You are standing next to a climatologist who says “some projections say that the sea level will rise by one foot more than it already has by 2100. You breath a sigh of relief because you are standing 10 feet above high tide, and you realize that one foot of seal level rise is easily accommodated by the sea you see in front of you.

But you would be a fool to not be worried for several reasons. First, you are standing on a 10 foot high sea cliff. The sea cliff represents erosion that happened since the last bout of sea level rise (and is actually an ongoing process). When the sea rises by one foot that sea cliff will erode away. The land many hundreds of yards behind you may be fine, but the place you are standing will be gone. It is hard to predict how much land will horizontally erode with a given rise in sea level, but it is generally a positive number, rarely zero (there are places where it effectively can be zero but not along the sandy shores). Second, as you stand there looking at the sea, the restaurants and businesses along the road behind you and the residential and commercial properties all across the nearby hinterland are busy lowering the ground water by taking water out for their own use as if it didn’t matter. So, while the sea may rise up one foot by 2011, it may also drop a foot because of the groundwater removal. Third, if the sea rises only a little across certain kinds of sediments, the weight of the sea may further suppress the land. Fourth, if this bit of land you are standing on is along the US Atlantic coast, you probably get more than one foot of sea level rise if the global sea level goes up by one foot. This has to do with the shape of the oceans, wind and water currents, etc. Fifth, one foot of sea level rise means many feet of extra storm surge when that rare tropical storm comes along. The chance of a hurricane hitting a given beach along the Atlantic is low. But we’re talking about the year 2011. Between now and then a hurricane with enhanced storm surge will come along and remove the land you are standing on. Sixth, the climatologist you are standing next to is an optimist. He is referring to “some estimates.” The funny thing about sea level rise estimates, as well as polar ice sheet melt estimates, is that they keep changing over time, always in one direction. Ten years ago the estimate was one foot by 2200. Now, it’s 4 feet, and some estimates suggest 6.6 feet. Also, looking at the paleo record, the last time atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were at their present level plus what we expect to put in the air over the next few decades for good measure, sea levels were so high we used meters instead of feet! Figure 25 feet, maybe 40. The town behind you will eventually be gone, buried deeply in the sea, a nice fishing ground. That probably won’t be by 2100, but is it really your job to throw every human that exists after 2100 under the climate change bus because it is a nice round number? No. No, it isn’t.

The Reuters report deals with most of those issues (though in a different way), chronicling numerous cases of actual current and ongoing encroachment of the sea on the land. And this brings us to the second key thing about this report. Reuters documents that the humans are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Local business leaders who want to preserve their short term profits are controlling supposedly long-term-thinking state and federal agencies so nothing gets done. Big Science (in the form of NASA) is busy studying glacial melt and sea level rise from rocket-launching bases that are being washed away by the rising ocean, and acting as though they can somehow stop that. Congress. It does nothing. And so on.

This is the first in a series of reports, it is excellent, and I look forward to the rest of them. You can read it here. By the way, a lot of what is documented by Reuters was covered earlier in this book: Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth, worth a look!

(The graphic above is from the National Climate Assessment report of 2014.)


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Scrivener on Linux: Oh Well…

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UPDATE (January 2, 2016): The makers of Scrivener have decided to abandon their Linux project. Kudos for them for giving it a try. The Scrivener on Linux users were not many, and almost nobody donated to the project, and as far as I can tell, the project was not OpenSource and thus could not have attracted much of an interest among a community of mostly OpenSourceHeads.

So, I’m no longer recommending that you mess around with Scrivener on Linux, as it is no longer maintained. Back to emacs, everybody!

Scrivener is a program used by authors to write and manage complex documents, with numerous parts, chapters, and scenes. It allows the text to be easily reorganized, and it has numerous ways in which the smallest portion of the text, the “scene,” and larger collections of text can be associated with notes and various kinds of meta-data. It is mainly a Mac program but a somewhat stripped down beta version is available for Linux.

In some ways, Scrivener is the very embodiment of anti-Linux, philosophically. In Linux, one strings together well developed and intensely tested tools on data streams to produce a result. So, to author a complex project, create files and edit them in a simple text editor, using some markdown. Keep the files organized in the file system and use file names carefully chosen to keep them in order in their respective directories. when it comes time to make project-wide modifications, use grep and sed to process all of the files at once or selected files. Eventually, run the files through LaTeX to produce beautiful output. Then, put the final product in a directory where people can find it on Gopher.

Gopher? Anyway …

On the other hand, emacs is the ultimate linux program. Emacs is a text editor that is so powerful and has so many community-contributed “modes” (like add-ins) that it can be used as a word processor, an email client, a calendar, a PIM, a web browser, an operating system, to make coffee, or to stop that table with the short leg from rocking back and forth. So, in this sense, a piece of software that does everything is also linux, philosophically.

And so, Scrivener, despite what I said above, is in a way the very embodiment of Linux, philosophically.

I’ve been using Scrivener on a Mac for some time now, and a while back I tried it on Linux. Scrivener for the Mac is a commercial product you must pay money for, though it is not expensive, but the Linux version, being highly experimental and probably unsafe, is free. But then again, this is Linux. We eat unsafe experimental free software for breakfast. So much that we usually skip lunch. Because we’re still fixing breakfast. As it were.

When you create a Scrivener project, you can chose among a number of templates.  The Scrivener community has created a modest number of alternatives, and you can create your own. The templates produce binders with specific helpful layouts.
When you create a Scrivener project, you can chose among a number of templates. The Scrivener community has created a modest number of alternatives, and you can create your own. The templates produce binders with specific helpful layouts.

Anyway, here’s what Scrivener does. It does everything. The full blown Mac version has more features than the Linux version, but both are feature rich. To me, the most important things are:

A document is organised in “scenes” which can be willy nilly moved around in relation to each other in a linear or hierarchical system. The documents are recursive, so a document can hold other documents, and the default is to have only the text in the lower level document as part of the final product (though this is entirely optional). A document can be defined as a “folder” which is really just a document that has a file folder icon representing it to make you feel like it is a folder.

The main scrivener work area with text editor (center), binder and inspector.
The main scrivener work area with text editor (center), binder and inspector.
Associated with the project, and with each separate document, is a note taking area. So, you can jot notes project-wide as you work, like “Don’t forget to write the chapter where everyone dies at the end,” or you can write notes on a given document like “Is this where I should use the joke about the slushy in the bathroom at Target?”

Each scene also has a number of attributes such as a “label” and a “status” and keywords. I think keywords may not be implemented in the Linux version yet.

Typically a project has one major folder that has all the actual writing distributed among scenes in it, and one or more additional folders in which you put stuff that is not in the product you are working on, but could be, or was but you pulled it out, or that includes research material.

You can work on one scene at a time.  Scenes have meta-data and document notes.
You can work on one scene at a time. Scenes have meta-data and document notes.
The scenes, folders, and everything are all held together with a binder typically displayed on the left side of the Scrivener application window, showing the hierarchy. A number of templates come with the program to create pre-organized binder paradigms, or you can just create one from scratch. You can change the icons on the folders/scenes to remind you of what they are. When a scene is active in the central editing window, you can display an “inspector” on the right side, showing the card (I’ll get to that later) on top the meta data, and the document or project notes. In the Mac version you can create additional meta-data categories.

Scrivenings Mode
Scrivenings Mode
An individual scene can be displayed in the editing window. Or, scenes can be shown as a collection of scenes in what is known as “Scrivenings mode.” Scrivenings mode is more or less standard word processing mode where all the text is simply there to scroll through, though scene titles may or may not be shown (optional).

A lot of people love the corkboard option. I remember when PZ Myers discovered Scrivener he raved about it. The corkboard is a corkboard (as you may have guessed) with 3 x 5 inch virtual index cards, one per scene, that you can move around and organize as though that was going to help you get your thoughts together. The corkboard has the scene title and some notes on what the scene is, which is yet another form of meta-data. I like the corkboard mode, but really, I don’t think it is the most useful features. Come for the corkboard, stay for the binder and the document and project notes!

Corkboard Mode
Corkboard Mode
When you are ready to do something outside of scrivener with your project, you compile it. You can compile it into an ebook, a file compatible with most word processors, a PDF file, a number of different predefined manuscript or script formats, etc. Scrivener does all sorts of magic for writing scripts, though I know nothing about that. There is also an outline mode which, in the Mac version, is very complex and powerful. In the Linux Version it is not. So I won’t mention it.

The compile process is cumbersome, esoteric, complicated, and requires training, so it is PERFECT for the average Linux user! But seriously, yes, you can compile your document into a pre-defined format in one or two clicks, but why would you ever do something so simple? Instead, change every possible option affecting formatting and layout to get it just the way you want it, then save that particular layout for later use as “My layout in February” or “This one worked mostly.”

The Powerful Compile Dialog Box.
The Powerful Compile Dialog Box.
One might say that one writes in Scrivener but then eventually uses a word processor for putting the final touches on a document. But it is also possible that you can compile directly to a final format with adequate or even excellent results and, while you may end up with a .docx file or a .pdf file, you are keeping all the work flow in Scrivener.

This fantastic and amazing book was compiled in Scrivener directly into ebook format.

You have to go HERE to find the unsupported and dangerous Linux version of Scrivener. Then, after you’ve installed it, install libaspell-dev so the in-line spell checking works.

A scrivener project file is a folder with a lot of files inside it. On the mac, this is a special kind of folder that is treated as a file, so that is what you see there, but in Linux you see a folder, inside of which is a file with the .scriv extension; that’s the file you run to open the software directly from a directory.

Do not mess with the contents of this folder. But if you want to mess with it you can find that inside a folder inside the folder are files that are the scenes you were working on. If you mess with these when Scrivener is using the project folder you may ruin the project, but if Scrivener is not looking you can probably mess around with the contents of the scene files. In fact, the Mac version gives you the option of “syncing” projects in such a way that you work on these scenes with an external editor of some kind while you are away from your Scrivener base station, i.e., on your hand held device.

Since this data storage system is complicated and delicate, it is potentially vulnerable to alteration while being used by the software, with potentially bad results. This puts your data at risk with cloud syncing services. Dropbox apparently place nice with Scrivener. I’ve been trying to figure out if Copy does, and I’ve been in touch with both Scrivener developers and Copy developers but I’m not sure yet. I use Copy for the masses of data on my computer because it is cheaper, and I use a free version of Dropbox for Scrivener files, just in case.

I would love to see more people who use Linux try out Scrivener, and maybe some day there will be a full Linux version of it. As I understand it, the Linux version is a compiled subset of the Windows version code base (yes, there is a Windows version) and the Windows version is a derivative of the Mac version.

I should also add that there are numerous books and web sites on how to use Scrivener, and Literature and Latte, the company that produces it, has developed an excellent and useful manual and a number of useful tutorials. Literature and Latte also has an excellent user community forum which is remarkably helpful and respectful. So be nice if you go over there.


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Should it be "math" or "maths"?

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Do the math:

There are actually two answers to this question.

First, “maths” looks plural and is preferred by some because “mathematics” is plural. The problem with that is “mathematics” is no more plural than “physics” or any other compound noun. It is a rational sounding utterly incorrect argument. If we said “mathematics are cool” then there might be a case. But we say “mathematics is cool.”

Second, some people say maths and some people say math, and that’s how language works. That is a valid argument, but if you are walking around in the US saying “maths” instead of “math” be aware that you are demonstrating an anglophile affection, which is fine, as long as you know you are doing it. Please remember to demonstrate other anglophile affections such as referring to “English Muffins” and “Crumpets” and telling your friend “I’ll knock you up in the morning” when you merely intend to come by to walk to work together. Most importantly, if you have switched to “maths” from “math” because of some rational argument you once heard, just know there isn’t a rational argument. It is just a matter of usage. It is arbitrary. There is no readon. And if you are in the US you are using the non-standard usage. If you are in England or somewhere fine, talk funny all you want!

ADDED:

The conversation about “knocking up” has developed here, on Facebook and on Twitter. Interestingly a lot of Brits claim this is simply not a thing Brits say, yet it is. It may simply be patchy in its use, but it really is a British saying. More so than an English Muffin being a Crumpet (I know it is not, but I do love the reaction to the comparison among the Crumpet Sympathizers). Anyway, “I’ll Knock You Up” is defined in many places, and used by many Brits, to mean to rouse, wake up, call on, etc. another person. In American English, it means to make pregnant. In at least some forms of British, when does not “get pregnant” but one “fall’s pregnant” and if one chooses one might have the baby in the hospital, in America, or in hospital, in British-English areas.

Anyway, here’s the Google Ngram for various uses of “knocked”:


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Honey, I Shrunk The Dinosaurs …

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There is a fantastic paper just out in Science: “Sustained miniaturization and anatomoical innovation in the dinosaurian anceestors of birds” by Michael Lee, Andrea Cau, Darren Naishe and Gareth Dyke.

I want to talk about this research but if you really want to know more about it, don’t rely on me; one of the co-authors of this important paper is Darren Naish, who happens to be a stupendous blogger, and he has written the research up here. So go read that for sure, and revel in the excellent graphics. Meanwhile I have a few random thoughts….

READ THE REST HERE


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