text:
Freeman Dyson [8.7.07]

My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.

FREEMAN DYSON is professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton. His professional interests are in mathematics and astronomy. Among his many books areDisturbing the Universe, Infinite in All Directions Origins of Life, From Eros to Gaia, Imagined Worlds, and The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet. His most recent book, Many Colored Glass: Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe (Page Barbour Lectures), is being published this month by University of Virgina Press.

Freeman Dyson's Edge Bio Page

1. The Need for Heretics

In the modern world, science and society often interact in a perverse way. We live in a technological society, and technology causes political problems. The politicians and the public expect science to provide answers to the problems. Scientific experts are paid and encouraged to provide answers. The public does not have much use for a scientist who says, “Sorry, but we don’t know”. The public prefers to listen to scientists who give confident answers to questions and make confident predictions of what will happen as a result of human activities. So it happens that the experts who talk publicly about politically contentious questions tend to speak more clearly than they think. They make confident predictions about the future, and end up believing their own predictions. Their predictions become dogmas which they do not question. The public is led to believe that the fashionable scientific dogmas are true, and it may sometimes happen that they are wrong. That is why heretics who question the dogmas are needed.

As a scientist I do not have much faith in predictions. Science is organized unpredictability. The best scientists like to arrange things in an experiment to be as unpredictable as possible, and then they do the experiment to see what will happen. You might say that if something is predictable then it is not science. When I make predictions, I am not speaking as a scientist. I am speaking as a story-teller, and my predictions are science-fiction rather than science. The predictions of science-fiction writers are notoriously inaccurate. Their purpose is to imagine what might happen rather than to describe what will happen. I will be telling stories that challenge the prevailing dogmas of today. The prevailing dogmas may be right, but they still need to be challenged. I am proud to be a heretic. The world always needs heretics to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies. Since I am heretic, I am accustomed to being in the minority. If I could persuade everyone to agree with me, I would not be a heretic.

We are lucky that we can be heretics today without any danger of being burned at the stake. But unfortunately I am an old heretic. Old heretics do not cut much ice. When you hear an old heretic talking, you can always say, “Too bad he has lost his marbles”, and pass on. What the world needs is young heretics. I am hoping that one or two of the people who read this piece may fill that role.

Two years ago, I was at Cornell University celebrating the life of Tommy Gold, a famous astronomer who died at a ripe old age. He was famous as a heretic, promoting unpopular ideas that usually turned out to be right. Long ago I was a guinea-pig in Tommy’s experiments on human hearing. He had a heretical idea that the human ear discriminates pitch by means of a set of tuned resonators with active electromechanical feedback. He published a paper explaining how the ear must work, [Gold, 1948]. He described how the vibrations of the inner ear must be converted into electrical signals which feed back into the mechanical motion, reinforcing the vibrations and increasing the sharpness of the resonance. The experts in auditory physiology ignored his work because he did not have a degree in physiology. Many years later, the experts discovered the two kinds of hair-cells in the inner ear that actually do the feedback as Tommy had predicted, one kind of hair-cell acting as electrical sensors and the other kind acting as mechanical drivers. It took the experts forty years to admit that he was right. Of course, I knew that he was right, because I had helped him do the experiments.

Later in his life, Tommy Gold promoted another heretical idea, that the oil and natural gas in the ground come up from deep in the mantle of the earth and have nothing to do with biology. Again the experts are sure that he is wrong, and he did not live long enough to change their minds. Just a few weeks before he died, some chemists at the Carnegie Institution in Washington did a beautiful experiment in a diamond anvil cell, [Scott et al., 2004]. They mixed together tiny quantities of three things that we know exist in the mantle of the earth, and observed them at the pressure and temperature appropriate to the mantle about two hundred kilometers down. The three things were calcium carbonate which is sedimentary rock, iron oxide which is a component of igneous rock, and water. These three things are certainly present when a slab of subducted ocean floor descends from a deep ocean trench into the mantle. The experiment showed that they react quickly to produce lots of methane, which is natural gas. Knowing the result of the experiment, we can be sure that big quantities of natural gas exist in the mantle two hundred kilometers down. We do not know how much of this natural gas pushes its way up through cracks and channels in the overlying rock to form the shallow reservoirs of natural gas that we are now burning. If the gas moves up rapidly enough, it will arrive intact in the cooler regions where the reservoirs are found. If it moves too slowly through the hot region, the methane may be reconverted to carbonate rock and water. The Carnegie Institute experiment shows that there is at least a possibility that Tommy Gold was right and the natural gas reservoirs are fed from deep below. The chemists sent an E-mail to Tommy Gold to tell him their result, and got back a message that he had died three days earlier. Now that he is dead, we need more heretics to take his place.

2. Climate and Land Management

The main subject of this piece is the problem of climate change. This is a contentious subject, involving politics and economics as well as science. The science is inextricably mixed up with politics. Everyone agrees that the climate is changing, but there are violently diverging opinions about the causes of change, about the consequences of change, and about possible remedies. I am promoting a heretical opinion, the first of three heresies that I will discuss in this piece.

My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.

There is no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the warming is not global. I am not saying that the warming does not cause problems. Obviously it does. Obviously we should be trying to understand it better. I am saying that the problems are grossly exaggerated. They take away money and attention from other problems that are more urgent and more important, such as poverty and infectious disease and public education and public health, and the preservation of living creatures on land and in the oceans, not to mention easy problems such as the timely construction of adequate dikes around the city of New Orleans.

I will discuss the global warming problem in detail because it is interesting, even though its importance is exaggerated. One of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas. To understand the movement of carbon through the atmosphere and biosphere, we need to measure a lot of numbers. I do not want to confuse you with a lot of numbers, so I will ask you to remember just one number. The number that I ask you to remember is one hundredth of an inch per year. Now I will explain what this number means. Consider the half of the land area of the earth that is not desert or ice-cap or city or road or parking-lot. This is the half of the land that is covered with soil and supports vegetation of one kind or another. Every year, it absorbs and converts into biomass a certain fraction of the carbon dioxide that we emit into the atmosphere. Biomass means living creatures, plants and microbes and animals, and the organic materials that are left behind when the creatures die and decay. We don’t know how big a fraction of our emissions is absorbed by the land, since we have not measured the increase or decrease of the biomass. The number that I ask you to remember is the increase in thickness, averaged over one half of the land area of the planet, of the biomass that would result if all the carbon that we are emitting by burning fossil fuels were absorbed. The average increase in thickness is one hundredth of an inch per year.

The point of this calculation is the very favorable rate of exchange between carbon in the atmosphere and carbon in the soil. To stop the carbon in the atmosphere from increasing, we only need to grow the biomass in the soil by a hundredth of an inch per year. Good topsoil contains about ten percent biomass, [Schlesinger, 1977], so a hundredth of an inch of biomass growth means about a tenth of an inch of topsoil. Changes in farming practices such as no-till farming, avoiding the use of the plow, cause biomass to grow at least as fast as this. If we plant crops without plowing the soil, more of the biomass goes into roots which stay in the soil, and less returns to the atmosphere. If we use genetic engineering to put more biomass into roots, we can probably achieve much more rapid growth of topsoil. I conclude from this calculation that the problem of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a problem of land management, not a problem of meteorology. No computer model of atmosphere and ocean can hope to predict the way we shall manage our land.

Here is another heretical thought. Instead of calculating world-wide averages of biomass growth, we may prefer to look at the problem locally. Consider a possible future, with China continuing to develop an industrial economy based largely on the burning of coal, and the United States deciding to absorb the resulting carbon dioxide by increasing the biomass in our topsoil. The quantity of biomass that can be accumulated in living plants and trees is limited, but there is no limit to the quantity that can be stored in topsoil. To grow topsoil on a massive scale may or may not be practical, depending on the economics of farming and forestry. It is at least a possibility to be seriously considered, that China could become rich by burning coal, while the United States could become environmentally virtuous by accumulating topsoil, with transport of carbon from mine in China to soil in America provided free of charge by the atmosphere, and the inventory of carbon in the atmosphere remaining constant. We should take such possibilities into account when we listen to predictions about climate change and fossil fuels. If biotechnology takes over the planet in the next fifty years, as computer technology has taken it over in the last fifty years, the rules of the climate game will be radically changed.

When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories. Many of the basic processes of planetary ecology are poorly understood. They must be better understood before we can reach an accurate diagnosis of the present condition of our planet. When we are trying to take care of a planet, just as when we are taking care of a human patient, diseases must be diagnosed before they can be cured. We need to observe and measure what is going on in the biosphere, rather than relying on computer models.

Everyone agrees that the increasing abundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has two important consequences, first a change in the physics of radiation transport in the atmosphere, and second a change in the biology of plants on the ground and in the ocean. Opinions differ on the relative importance of the physical and biological effects, and on whether the effects, either separately or together, are beneficial or harmful. The physical effects are seen in changes of rainfall, cloudiness, wind-strength and temperature, which are customarily lumped together in the misleading phrase “global warming”. In humid air, the effect of carbon dioxide on radiation transport is unimportant because the transport of thermal radiation is already blocked by the much larger greenhouse effect of water vapor. The effect of carbon dioxide is important where the air is dry, and air is usually dry only where it is cold. Hot desert air may feel dry but often contains a lot of water vapor. The warming effect of carbon dioxide is strongest where air is cold and dry, mainly in the arctic rather than in the tropics, mainly in mountainous regions rather than in lowlands, mainly in winter rather than in summer, and mainly at night rather than in daytime. The warming is real, but it is mostly making cold places warmer rather than making hot places hotter. To represent this local warming by a global average is misleading.

The fundamental reason why carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is critically important to biology is that there is so little of it. A field of corn growing in full sunlight in the middle of the day uses up all the carbon dioxide within a meter of the ground in about five minutes. If the air were not constantly stirred by convection currents and winds, the corn would stop growing. About a tenth of all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is converted into biomass every summer and given back to the atmosphere every fall. That is why the effects of fossil-fuel burning cannot be separated from the effects of plant growth and decay. There are five reservoirs of carbon that are biologically accessible on a short time-scale, not counting the carbonate rocks and the deep ocean which are only accessible on a time-scale of thousands of years. The five accessible reservoirs are the atmosphere, the land plants, the topsoil in which land plants grow, the surface layer of the ocean in which ocean plants grow, and our proved reserves of fossil fuels. The atmosphere is the smallest reservoir and the fossil fuels are the largest, but all five reservoirs are of comparable size. They all interact strongly with one another. To understand any of them, it is necessary to understand all of them.

As an example of the way different reservoirs of carbon dioxide may interact with each other, consider the atmosphere and the topsoil. Greenhouse experiments show that many plants growing in an atmosphere enriched with carbon dioxide react by increasing their root-to-shoot ratio. This means that the plants put more of their growth into roots and less into stems and leaves. A change in this direction is to be expected, because the plants have to maintain a balance between the leaves collecting carbon from the air and the roots collecting mineral nutrients from the soil. The enriched atmosphere tilts the balance so that the plants need less leaf-area and more root-area. Now consider what happens to the roots and shoots when the growing season is over, when the leaves fall and the plants die. The new-grown biomass decays and is eaten by fungi or microbes. Some of it returns to the atmosphere and some of it is converted into topsoil. On the average, more of the above-ground growth will return to the atmosphere and more of the below-ground growth will become topsoil. So the plants with increased root-to-shoot ratio will cause an increased transfer of carbon from the atmosphere into topsoil. If the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide due to fossil-fuel burning has caused an increase in the average root-to-shoot ratio of plants over large areas, then the possible effect on the top-soil reservoir will not be small. At present we have no way to measure or even to guess the size of this effect. The aggregate biomass of the topsoil of the planet is not a measurable quantity. But the fact that the topsoil is unmeasurable does not mean that it is unimportant.

At present we do not know whether the topsoil of the United States is increasing or decreasing. Over the rest of the world, because of large-scale deforestation and erosion, the topsoil reservoir is probably decreasing. We do not know whether intelligent land-management could increase the growth of the topsoil reservoir by four billion tons of carbon per year, the amount needed to stop the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. All that we can say for sure is that this is a theoretical possibility and ought to be seriously explored.

3. Oceans and Ice-ages

Another problem that has to be taken seriously is a slow rise of sea level which could become catastrophic if it continues to accelerate. We have accurate measurements of sea level going back two hundred years. We observe a steady rise from 1800 to the present, with an acceleration during the last fifty years. It is widely believed that the recent acceleration is due to human activities, since it coincides in time with the rapid increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But the rise from 1800 to 1900 was probably not due to human activities. The scale of industrial activities in the nineteenth century was not large enough to have had measurable global effects. So a large part of the observed rise in sea level must have other causes. One possible cause is a slow readjustment of the shape of the earth to the disappearance of the northern ice-sheets at the end of the ice age twelve thousand years ago. Another possible cause is the large-scale melting of glaciers, which also began long before human influences on climate became significant. Once again, we have an environmental danger whose magnitude cannot be predicted until we know more about its causes, [Munk, 2002].

The most alarming possible cause of sea-level rise is a rapid disintegration of the West Antarctic ice-sheet, which is the part of Antarctica where the bottom of the ice is far below sea level. Warming seas around the edge of Antarctica might erode the ice-cap from below and cause it to collapse into the ocean. If the whole of West Antarctica disintegrated rapidly, sea-level would rise by five meters, with disastrous effects on billions of people. However, recent measurements of the ice-cap show that it is not losing volume fast enough to make a significant contribution to the presently observed sea-level rise. It appears that the warming seas around Antarctica are causing an increase in snowfall over the ice-cap, and the increased snowfall on top roughly cancels out the decrease of ice volume caused by erosion at the edges. The same changes, increased melting of ice at the edges and increased snowfall adding ice on top, are also observed in Greenland. In addition, there is an increase in snowfall over the East Antarctic Ice-cap, which is much larger and colder and is in no danger of melting. This is another situation where we do not know how much of the environmental change is due to human activities and how much to long-term natural processes over which we have no control.

Another environmental danger that is even more poorly understood is the possible coming of a new ice-age. A new ice-age would mean the burial of half of North America and half of Europe under massive ice-sheets. We know that there is a natural cycle that has been operating for the last eight hundred thousand years. The length of the cycle is a hundred thousand years. In each hundred-thousand year period, there is an ice-age that lasts about ninety thousand years and a warm interglacial period that lasts about ten thousand years. We are at present in a warm period that began twelve thousand years ago, so the onset of the next ice-age is overdue. If human activities were not disturbing the climate, a new ice-age might already have begun. We do not know how to answer the most important question: do our human activities in general, and our burning of fossil fuels in particular, make the onset of the next ice-age more likely or less likely?

There are good arguments on both sides of this question. On the one side, we know that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was much lower during past ice-ages than during warm periods, so it is reasonable to expect that an artificially high level of carbon dioxide might stop an ice-age from beginning. On the other side, the oceanographer Wallace Broecker [Broecker, 1997] has argued that the present warm climate in Europe depends on a circulation of ocean water, with the Gulf Stream flowing north on the surface and bringing warmth to Europe, and with a counter-current of cold water flowing south in the deep ocean. So a new ice-age could begin whenever the cold deep counter-current is interrupted. The counter-current could be interrupted when the surface water in the Arctic becomes less salty and fails to sink, and the water could become less salty when the warming climate increases the Arctic rainfall. Thus Broecker argues that a warm climate in the Arctic may paradoxically cause an ice-age to begin. Since we are confronted with two plausible arguments leading to opposite conclusions, the only rational response is to admit our ignorance. Until the causes of ice-ages are understood, we cannot know whether the increase of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing or decreasing the danger.

4. The Wet Sahara

My second heresy is also concerned with climate change. It is about the mystery of the wet Sahara. This is a mystery that has always fascinated me. At many places in the Sahara desert that are now dry and unpopulated, we find rock-paintings showing people with herds of animals. The paintings are abundant, and some of them are of high artistic quality, comparable with the more famous cave-paintings in France and Spain. The Sahara paintings are more recent than the cave-paintings. They come in a variety of styles and were probably painted over a period of several thousand years. The latest of them show Egyptian influences and may be contemporaneous with early Egyptian tomb paintings. Henri Lhote’s book, “The Search for the Tassili Frescoes”, [Lhote, 1958], is illustrated with reproductions of fifty of the paintings. The best of the herd paintings date from roughly six thousand years ago. They are strong evidence that the Sahara at that time was wet. There was enough rain to support herds of cows and giraffes, which must have grazed on grass and trees. There were also some hippopotamuses and elephants. The Sahara then must have been like the Serengeti today.

At the same time, roughly six thousand years ago, there were deciduous forests in Northern Europe where the trees are now conifers, proving that the climate in the far north was milder than it is today. There were also trees standing in mountain valleys in Switzerland that are now filled with famous glaciers. The glaciers that are now shrinking were much smaller six thousand years ago than they are today. Six thousand years ago seems to have been the warmest and wettest period of the interglacial era that began twelve thousand years ago when the last Ice Age ended. I would like to ask two questions. First, if the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is allowed to continue, shall we arrive at a climate similar to the climate of six thousand years ago when the Sahara was wet? Second, if we could choose between the climate of today with a dry Sahara and the climate of six thousand years ago with a wet Sahara, should we prefer the climate of today? My second heresy answers yes to the first question and no to the second. It says that the warm climate of six thousand years ago with the wet Sahara is to be preferred, and that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may help to bring it back. I am not saying that this heresy is true. I am only saying that it will not do us any harm to think about it.

The biosphere is the most complicated of all the things we humans have to deal with. The science of planetary ecology is still young and undeveloped. It is not surprising that honest and well-informed experts can disagree about facts. But beyond the disagreement about facts, there is another deeper disagreement about values. The disagreement about values may be described in an over-simplified way as a disagreement between naturalists and humanists. Naturalists believe that nature knows best. For them the highest value is to respect the natural order of things. Any gross human disruption of the natural environment is evil. Excessive burning of fossil fuels is evil. Changing nature’s desert, either the Sahara desert or the ocean desert, into a managed ecosystem where giraffes or tunafish may flourish, is likewise evil. Nature knows best, and anything we do to improve upon Nature will only bring trouble.

The humanist ethic begins with the belief that humans are an essential part of nature. Through human minds the biosphere has acquired the capacity to steer its own evolution, and now we are in charge. Humans have the right and the duty to reconstruct nature so that humans and biosphere can both survive and prosper. For humanists, the highest value is harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. The greatest evils are poverty, underdevelopment, unemployment, disease and hunger, all the conditions that deprive people of opportunities and limit their freedoms. The humanist ethic accepts an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a small price to pay, if world-wide industrial development can alleviate the miseries of the poorer half of humanity. The humanist ethic accepts our responsibility to guide the evolution of the planet.

The sharpest conflict between naturalist and humanist ethics arises in the regulation of genetic engineering. The naturalist ethic condemns genetically modified food-crops and all other genetic engineering projects that might upset the natural ecology. The humanist ethic looks forward to a time not far distant, when genetically engineered food-crops and energy-crops will bring wealth to poor people in tropical countries, and incidentally give us tools to control the growth of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Here I must confess my own bias. Since I was born and brought up in England, I spent my formative years in a land with great beauty and a rich ecology which is almost entirely man-made. The natural ecology of England was uninterrupted and rather boring forest. Humans replaced the forest with an artificial landscape of grassland and moorland, fields and farms, with a much richer variety of plant and animal species. Quite recently, only about a thousand years ago, we introduced rabbits, a non-native species which had a profound effect on the ecology. Rabbits opened glades in the forest where flowering plants now flourish. There is no wilderness in England, and yet there is plenty of room for wild-flowers and birds and butterflies as well as a high density of humans. Perhaps that is why I am a humanist.

To conclude this piece I come to my third and last heresy. My third heresy says that the United States has less than a century left of its turn as top nation. Since the modern nation-state was invented around the year 1500, a succession of countries have taken turns at being top nation, first Spain, then France, Britain, America. Each turn lasted about 150 years. Ours began in 1920, so it should end about 2070. The reason why each top nation’s turn comes to an end is that the top nation becomes over-extended, militarily, economically and politically. Greater and greater efforts are required to maintain the number one position. Finally the over-extension becomes so extreme that the structure collapses. Already we can see in the American posture today some clear symptoms of over-extension. Who will be the next top nation? China is the obvious candidate. After that it might be India or Brazil. We should be asking ourselves, not how to live in an America-dominated world, but how to prepare for a world that is not America-dominated. That may be the most important problem for the next generation of Americans to solve. How does a people that thinks of itself as number one yield gracefully to become number two?

I am telling the next generation of young students, who will still be alive in the second half of our century, that misfortunes are on the way. Their precious Ph.D., or whichever degree they went through long years of hard work to acquire, may be worth less than they think. Their specialized training may become obsolete. They may find themselves over-qualified for the available jobs. They may be declared redundant. The country and the culture to which they belong may move far away from the mainstream. But these misfortunes are also opportunities. It is always open to them to join the heretics and find another way to make a living. With or without a Ph.D., there are big and important problems for them to solve.

I will not attempt to summarize the lessons that my readers should learn from these heresies. The main lesson that I would like them to take home is that the long-range future is not predetermined. The future is in their hands. The rules of the world-historical game change from decade to decade in unpredictable ways. All our fashionable worries and all our prevailing dogmas will probably be obsolete in fifty years. My heresies will probably also be obsolete. It is up to them to find new heresies to guide our way to a more hopeful future.

5. Bad Advice to a Young Scientist

Sixty years ago, when I was a young and arrogant physicist, I tried to predict the future of physics and biology. My prediction was an extreme example of wrongness, perhaps a world record in the category of wrong predictions. I was giving advice about future employment to Francis Crick, the great biologist who died in 2005 after a long and brilliant career. He discovered, with Jim Watson, the double helix. They discovered the double helix structure of DNA in 1953, and thereby gave birth to the new science of molecular genetics. Eight years before that, in 1945, before World War 2 came to an end, I met Francis Crick for the first time. He was in Fanum House, a dismal office building in London where the Royal Navy kept a staff of scientists. Crick had been working for the Royal Navy for a long time and was depressed and discouraged. He said he had missed his chance of ever amounting to anything as a scientist. Before World War 2, he had started a promising career as a physicist. But then the war hit him at the worst time, putting a stop to his work in physics and keeping him away from science for six years. The six best years of his life, squandered on naval intelligence, lost and gone forever. Crick was good at naval intelligence, and did important work for the navy. But military intelligence bears the same relation to intelligence as military music bears to music. After six years doing this kind of intelligence, it was far too late for Crick to start all over again as a student and relearn all the stuff he had forgotten. No wonder he was depressed. I came away from Fanum House thinking, “How sad. Such a bright chap. If it hadn’t been for the war, he would probably have been quite a good scientist”.

A year later, I met Crick again. The war was over and he was much more cheerful. He said he was thinking of giving up physics and making a completely fresh start as a biologist. He said the most exciting science for the next twenty years would be in biology and not in physics. I was then twenty-two years old and very sure of myself. I said, “No, you’re wrong. In the long run biology will be more exciting, but not yet. The next twenty years will still belong to physics. If you switch to biology now, you will be too old to do the exciting stuff when biology finally takes off”. Fortunately, he didn’t listen to me. He went to Cambridge and began thinking about DNA. It took him only seven years to prove me wrong. The moral of this story is clear. Even a smart twenty-two-year-old is not a reliable guide to the future of science. And the twenty-two-year-old has become even less reliable now that he is eighty-two.

[Excerpted from Many Colored Glass: Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe (Page Barbour Lectures) by Freeman Dyson, University of Virgina Press, 2007.]


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All 4 books by Edward Tufte now in
paperback editions, $100 for all 4
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Envisioning Information
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Slopegraphs for comparing gradients: Slopegraph theory and practice

Slopegraphs compare changes usually over time for a list
of nouns located on an ordinal or interval scale.

Many examples, the first from my The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983):

This table-graphic above organizes data for viewing in several directions. When read
vertically, the chart ranks 15 countries by government tax collections in 1970 and again
in 1979, with the names spaced in proportion to the percentages. Across the columns, the
paired comparisons show how the numbers changed over the years. The slopes are also
compared by reading down the collection of lines, and lines of unusual slope stand out
from the overall upward pattern. The information shown is both integrated and separated:
integrated through its connected content, separated in that the eye follows several different
and uncluttered paths in looking over the data:

Such an analysis of the viewing architecture of a graphic will help in creating and
evaluating designs that organize complex information hierarchically.

Source: Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 158-159.

Below, a table showing cancer survival rates for 5, 10, 15, and 20 years.

Below, this table-graphic, a slope graph, gives a rough visual idea of time-gradients for survival
for each cancer. Like the original table, every visual element in the graphic shows data.

The slopes could also be sparklines showing how the detailed changes add up to the overall change.

Source: Edward Tufte, Beautiful Evidence, 174, 176.

Bumps charts can also be considered slopegraphs. Here is a spectacular bumps chart from my Beautiful Evidence (2006) pages 56-57.

The 1987 bumps chart in my Envisioning Information (1990), page 111, also qualifies as a slopegraph.
Although it would be better to include at the right a shuffled list of nouns.

Can our Kindly Contributors provide other examples?
An obvious candidate is the slopegraph of the average life span in 1980 and in 2010 for 50 or so countries.

January 13, 2014
Slopegraph contest:
Two winners of slopegraph contest, each receives $600 + a set of 4 books

Pascal Schetelat
Excellent design and interface, good documentation of program, use of color

Ben Concutere
Excellent design, good documentation, colors, SVG

Thanks you all! ET and the small commitee of happy judges.
The two winners should get in touch with me at etscuplture ]a t} goomail etc

write a program posted on github or as a Chrome app whose output closely replicates
the (1) GNP slopegraph and the (2) cancer survival slopegraph immediately below.
Necessary subtleties include thin gray lines that don't crash into words/numbers,
typeface Gill Sans or equally refined, tuned ordinal spacing of words at left with the
line paths, probably best to make each line graph separately and then order and stack
them appropriately to avoid too many line crashes. The idea is to compare slopes, with
what are in effect a set of separate plots then ordered by first entry and then stacked with
some optical care. User option: assign various clear but quiet colors to occasionally
single out a few particular lines of interest. There should be a separate data-documentation
box describing the source of the data, a link to the original data set, and the person directly
responsible for the data and graph displayed. Much better if your code doesn't require
a lot of extra stuff/apps to run; best if it runs in modern browsers Chrome, Safari, whatever,
or as a Chrome app. You might notify us of your entry by going down to the bottom of this thread to the "contribute"
and provide a link to your entry. We will also search the web for good slopegraph programs.

All this is not easy. But a successful easy-to-use implementation would be a great
contribution to open-source statistical graphics. Slopegraphs focus on slopes, deltas, changes;
have lots of data; and have a straightforward reading even to the statistically innocent.
$1200 in prizes arbitrarily awarded. thanks, et

-- Edward Tufte

What about the standard errors?

Comparing the table of cancer survival rates with the slopegraph, there's a big loss for a statistics-oriented reader: the standard errors.

This is easy to correct by adding them to the slopegraph, of course (perhaps in a smaller size, in parenthesis, under the number, as some journals require). But a possibility would be to put error bars on those numbers for which the s.e. is so large that the progression is really not significantly different from a straight line.

Another possibility—only in an interactive graph, not paper—would be for the error bars to appear on mouse-over the numbers, or some other interactive method. This would raise the ratio of representation complexity to data complexity, which I believe ET advises against (as does common sense).

A third possibility would be to use the lines connecting the numbers to indicate significance: perhaps a dotted line for non-significant differences. This, of course, would preclude significance tests across different types of cancer, but this is not the type of variable one has a choice over (it's not like people get to choose which cancer they get), while differences in longevity are important.

I'm sure there are smarter ideas out there. I just like to have the SE whenever looking at statistical data.

ET reply to Jose Silva:

As the text notes, the data table and the slopegraph are colleagues in explanation not competitors. One display can serve some but not all functions.

So the solution is (1) a table for the data geeks (and the table is lousy for showing and comparing gradients) and (2) a gradient graphic for showing the percent survival and comparing the downward gradients. That is exactly what is done above.

There are also serious problems with standard errors: the assumption of independent observations, the assumption of sampling or randomization that is necessary for generating statistical tests, the assumption of spherical normality for statistical tests. Also the overall slope of the complete gradient (which is optically clear) requires an overall estimate not the point estimate of each 5 year group. Note also the statistical testing mess that results when the viewer compares overall gradients for multiple cancers.

The way to gain inferential credibility and cancer knowledge is not by standard errors but rather by some sort of independent replication on a fresh data set (such as European cancer data). If something were to be added to the gradient graphic, it might be to annotate some of the more interesting results, or replacing the gradient line with a survival year-by-year sparkline, or showing a second slopegraph for European cancer data.

Thanks for Jose Silva for raising the standard error matter.

-- Jose C Silva (email)

Slopegraphs in quantum chemistry: level-crossing diagrams

John P. Boyd in his notes on my display (with a slopegraph architecture) on decade changes in
taxes/GNP for various countries suggests that the display resembles "level-crossing diagrams
common in quantum chemistry and atomic physics."

Can a Kindly Contributor confirm this and find a more detailed example in the research literature?

-- Edward Tufte

A very clever slopegraph variant

"On being reasonable," by Horace Dediu.

Note the log scale in the second graph.

-- Edward Tufte

Since slope or the gradient is an important component, it is critical, I believe, to use log scale. Using a normal scale would actually distort the rate of change and present a wrong comparative picture.

-- Paresh Shah (email)

More on orbit-crossing diagrams

About the Quantum Chemistry orbital-crossing diagrams:

The most famous ones are the Tanabe-Sugano diagrams that can be used to predict the properties of metal ions that are surrounded by non-metals (H2O for example).

Tanabe-Sugano d2 diagram Tanabe-Sugano d4 diagram Tanabe-Sugano d6 diagram Tanabe-Sugano d7 diagram

The y-axis is the energy of the possible states of the electrons around the metal ion. On the x-axis, we have a measure of how tightly the non-metal holds onto the metal ion.

If you're familiar with electron energy level diagrams, you can take a vertical slice out of the T-S diagram to get the spacing of the familiar horizontal lines upon which you can place pairs of electrons, building up from the bottom. Crossings in the T-S diagram indicate that some states become more favorable than others at specific binding strengths.

-- Daniel Peterson (email)

Internet download speeds

Numbers above show the exact interweb download times and their big increases in the last 4 years. But the more subtle and relevant gradient is the relative rate of improvement by country. Looks like larger countries in land area roughly tend to have smaller recent gains in download times. (See discussion below about multiple gradient reading in the GNP chart and in the cancer rates.) Also US interwebs access costs more compared to other countries: Bloomberg

As Dilbert said "I can fail at any speed you like."

Finally, slopegraphs tend to be getting very tall, to pick up relative (rather than just ordinal) positions of the ordering variable. That suggests taking logarithms of the ordering variable if it is varying in a multiplicative, rather than additive, fashion. On taking logarithms, see my essay.

The more general point in statistical analysis is that obvious things are statistically adjusted in order to make keener distinctions: in this case to see acceleration of the download speed improvements.

-- Edward Tufte

Inspired by the "Gender Comparisons" slopegraph contribution in the comments and driven to invention due to the lack of tools out there for creating slopegraphs, I tossed a bit of Python together as a skeleton framework for making simple slopegraphs; see my method here.

-- Bob Rudis (email)

For things dealing with health, it's true that showing percentiles is quite interesting as everyone is unique. It is a way to show the distribution of data quite nicely (even more interestingly than standard error bars)

The Body-Mass index curves or height/mass curves are quite interesting in that respect :

Showing the percentile is clearly interesting : not being on the average line is not a problem in itself, it's being on the edge which is troublesome. It is also quite funny to see that similar curves for France are quite different.

In France, the growth is regularly checked and the points are reported in a book to be able to follow the slope as well as the absolute value for a given child compared to others. It enables to do some prevention and warn nutritionists if needed.

The idea of exploring the whole possible ranges for the data was also explored by Bret Victor in his up and down the ladder of abstraction article. His article is not based on statistics but questions quite deeply the way to present available data.

P.S. Both grids suffer from to heavily gridded data, and the color choice for the Body mass index is quite surprising : anorexia seems not to be a problem while overweight is labeled as such.
P.P.S. For slopegraphs used in chemistry and physics, it is called Walsh diagrams. In chemistry, it is usually used to compare two different geometries and determine which one is preferred.

-- Martin Verot (email)

Martin Verot's contribution ties slope graphs to nomographs. This board has a thread on nomographs for those interested.

-- Niels Olson (email)

The top 100 baby names in England and Wales for 2011. Go to The Telegraph website to use the ONS interactive explorer.

-- Edward Tufte

Graphical timetables as slopegraph variant

    Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, pages 31, 116.

    Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information, page 45.

-- Edward Tufte

    Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information, pages 108 and 109.

My design of a bus schedule and route combines a graphical timetable with a route map overlaid on a precisely
detailed aerial photograph, so much richer than the typical schematic diagram of bus routes. Hourly, daily, and
weekly rhythms of the buses are clearly revealed, as well as details of each journey. During rush hours, lines
densely crowd into spaghetti—but then service is so frequent that the jumble of lines informs the rider simply to
show up, for there will be virtually no wait for whatever bus it is that arrives. The gray grid is set at ten-minute
intervals in order to ease visual interpolation of the times of arrival. The aerial photograph unveils the area mostly
at the level of house resolution, that is, with sufficiently fine details to show individual buildings. Indeed, the
reaction of those who live in the area is to explore the photograph, personalizing the data, seeking to discover their
own residence, school, or workplace. Same picture, but many stories.

-- Edward Tufte

slopegraphs for changes in IMRT

This is an experiment in slopegraphs to see if one could enhance an otherwise excellent article by Jean M. Mitchell, Ph.D. last October in the NEJM. I would appreciate your comments. To align the labels and values with their slopes I used an old, stable LaTeX library by Eitan Gurari that I find does a wonderful job of drawing Finite State Automaton diagrams. This may seem like overkill for the current problem.

-- john m miller (email)

Amazing, interactive slopegraph by Carlo Zapponi. It shows the migration flow of people from a country selected by the user to related destination countries. Line thickness correlates to the relative proportion of emigrated people.

people movin'

-- Mark McCubbin (email)

The earliest example I have found of a slopegraph is by Willard Cope Brinton from his 1914 volume Graphic Methods for Presenting Facts.

Brinton slopegraph

-- Matt R (email)

Upon further digging around, I have found this beautiful example from 1883, in Scribner's statistical atlas of the United States, showing by graphic methods their present condition and their political, social and industrial development, by Fletcher W. Hewes and Henry Gannett. The Statistical Atlas for the previous census, published in 1870, did not have a plot like this.

It is available from the Library of Congress in high resolution and is worth having a good hard look at.

1883 slopegraph

1883 slopegraph detail

-- Matt R (email)

From The Story of the Season:

The Story of
the Season

The Story of
the Season

Built by Anna Powell-Smith—find me on Twitter. Match data from, used by permission of Joseph Buchdahl. Any errors are mine not his. Please get in touch via Twitter or by email if you spot any problems, or if you'd like to commission a version of this visualisation for another country or another sport. Created with D3.js

-- Emily

warcinfo:
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2018-39
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for September 2018
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-37-160-190.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 0.11-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/


text:
Anti-Crime Efforts Often Found To Fall Short

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Some of the nation's most politically popular crime-prevention programs--from boot camps to alternative schools--often fail to thwart juvenile delinquency, the most exhaustive study of the country's anti-crime efforts has found. Browse Education Week's 'Web Connection' Your Best On-line Source for Education Products and Services

Many school-based anti-crime efforts are encouraging, but the least impressive educational approaches tend to attract the bulk of federal funds, according to the congressionally mandated study, "Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising."

"Programs tend to get funded not because of their merits, but because of the effectiveness of their advocates," asserted Lawrence W. Sherman, the chairman of the department of criminology at the University of Maryland at College Park and the report's lead author.

In the 600-page study that was given to Congress this month, a team of criminologists at the University of Maryland reviewed more than 500 existing studies to assess the effectiveness of more than $3 billion that the U.S. Department of Justice spends on crime prevention each year.

Some early-childhood programs in which workers conduct home visits with parents and their infants have been shown to have a lasting and positive impact on youths, the study says. The researchers also conclude that nongovernmental community-based mentoring programs, such as Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America, have been shown to help reduce illegal drug and alcohol use among teenagers.

Conversely, the report notes that highly regimented incarceration programs for juvenile offenders often fail to prevent participants from committing future crimes.

"Simply having a militaristic environment with a focus on discipline doesn't work," said Denise C. Gottfredson, one of the authors. But recidivism rates tend to drop when follow-up services in the community are provided, she said.

The report also questions the track record of some alternative schools for disruptive students, which are popular among many state leaders who are eager to offer teachers relief in the classroom. Although some alternative schools designed for severe disciplinary cases have produced "remarkable improvements" in students' behavior and academic performance, others have actually fostered delinquency, the report says. "Whenever you pull all the most delinquent kids together, unless the program is strong, it's likely to increase delinquency," Ms. Gottfredson contended.

The researchers also found that the best-financed school-based strategies for preventing crime tend to be mediocre. The researchers chiefly criticize the popular Drug Abuse Resistance Education program and an effort called Gang Resistance Education and Training. DARE, which is used in thousands of public schools, enlists law-enforcement officers to deliver anti-drug messages to students. GREAT, which is financed in part by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, also employs police to drive home an anti-violence message in schools.

The trouble with DARE and GREAT, Ms. Gottfredson said, is that they both use didactic methods instead of teaching children the social skills they need to resist drugs and stay out of trouble.

Whatever lessons are learned in the classroom, the surest route to deterring crime in schools is the creation of a disciplined environment, the University of Maryland's Mr. Sherman said.

No Shortcuts

Few experts outside of Congress had read the research as of last week. Some, however, were troubled by specific conclusions.

Thomas L. Schneider, the special agent in charge of the GREAT program for ATF, dismissed the claim that the program was ineffective. "We don't just sit in a classroom and demonstrate negative activities. We lead kids through role-playing so they can act out the preferred behavior," he said.

Ralph Lochridge, a spokesman for DARE America, based in Inglewood, Calif., added that the research fails to register changes DARE has made in recent years.

Ultimately, many federally sponsored crime-prevention programs fail because they don't address the underlying economic and social factors that contribute to a violent culture, some state leaders said.

"We will never get a handle on delinquency until we address the root problems a kid has," said Jerry Regier, Oklahoma's secretary of health and human services and the former director of the U.S. Justice Department's office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention. "Until the federal government is willing to recognize these things, you're just putting Band-Aids on," he said.

In their recommendations to Congress, the authors suggest that federal resources be targeted to more urban neighborhoods where youth violence is concentrated.

State leaders plagued by urban crime welcomed that suggestion. "Given how expensive these programs are and how strapped most states are, we can't do it all," said John Truscott, the spokesman for Gov. John Engler of Michigan.

The authors suggest that Congress pay for rigorous scientific critiques so the federal government can nurture efforts that work.

But Deborah Prothrow-Stith, a professor of public-health practice at Harvard University, warned against the search for any quick solutions. "Knowing what's effective once a kid's in trouble is important, but there's no one cause or solution, and there's no shortcut around building healthy communities."

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Parties Take Up New Education Policy Debate

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For two years, Republicans and Democrats debated whether there should be a federal Department of Education. The Democrats won.

Now the two sides are embroiled in a fight over exactly what the department can and should be doing.

Their debate is focused on three issues: national testing, which is being championed by the Clinton administration, and block grants and private school choice, both backed primarily by Republicans. Each side is using public relations and legislative threats to insist that its philosophy prevail. And, so far, neither side is giving in.

Sen. Slade Gorton

"One of the most important issues for Republicans today is education reform," Jim Nicholson, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, said at a Sept. 25 meeting with reporters. The breakfast was one of a series of Washington events last month designed to highlight the achievements of GOP governors and the initiatives of the party's House and Senate leaders.

"It's become clear that there are some who are waging an effort to undermine our commitment to public education and our public schools," President Clinton said Sept. 30 in one of several public statements he's made recently to promote his proposals and rebuke his opponents.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman

Because testing, block grants, and choice play integral roles in two annual spending bills, the debates are likely to come to a head this month. Congress last week extended the deadline for passing appropriations bills until Oct. 23.

Already, the rhetoric is escalating. Mr. Clinton is promising to veto any spending bill that doesn't allow for his administration's proposed voluntary new national tests, which most Republicans strongly oppose, or that creates school vouchers or bundles most federal education spending into block grants.

And Democrats in the Senate say they are willing to use the filibuster--a procedure that allows debate to continue so long as 41 senators oppose a bill--on any measure that conflicts with the president's agenda. Republicans are making the same threats if they don't get their way.

What the People Want

The start of this year's debate dates back to 1995. The newly installed GOP Congress called for the elimination of the Education Department and drastic cuts in its programs. To the vocal consternation of Democrats, several Republican leaders said publicly that their goal was to gradually eliminate the federal role in the education.

That message continued into last year's presidential election when GOP nominee Bob Dole's platform called for the department's elimination and promoted a school choice agenda. ("Dole, Clinton at Sharp Odds on Education," Sept. 4, 1996.)

But after Mr. Dole's defeat and the loss of eight Republican seats in the House, the party decided to pursue a more activist education agenda.

The GOP "is keying into what the American public is asking for," said Ed Goeas, the president of the Tarrance Group, an Alexandria, Va., polling firm that advises Republicans. "They're focusing on some things that the federal government can do."

The cornerstones of the agenda are school choice and block grants, two mainstays of Republican policy.

Last month, the Senate approved a plan to put almost all federal K-12 programs into a $11 billion block grant that would send money directly to school boards with few federal requirements.

"Bypassing federal and state bureaucracies, which siphon millions of dollars and attach regulatory strings, means more authority and more money for local educators," Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., the plan's sponsor, said in a national radio address Sept. 20.

That argument is close to what focus-group participants representing the general public are saying they want, Mr. Goeas said.

But it's not what President Clinton wants. With the backing of his fellow Democratic in Congress, he has threatened to veto any spending bill that includes the block grant provision. That veto threat alone complicates the appropriations process.

In a separate series of legislative initiatives and public relations events, Republicans also are promoting school choice aggressively. Throughout September, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., spoke on school choice at congressional hearings and press conferences.

Choice Agenda

The legislative focus for the issue is the annual spending bill for the District of Columbia. The House Appropriations Committee last week approved a $7 million initiative that would grant $3,200 scholarships to K-12 students in Washington that could be used to help pay tuition at private schools, including religious schools, or public schools in neighboring suburban districts. The Senate removed a similar program from its companion bill after Democrats recruited 42 votes to continue debate until the provision was taken out.

After President Clinton criticized the voucher plan on Sept. 30, House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, fired back with a staple of Republicans' recent rhetoric: Give parents control.

"No political grandstanding can justify denying low-income children the same opportunity to attend a safe school with rigorous academics and real discipline," he said in a statement.

Democratic Response

Mr. Clinton and Democrats responded that their agenda would help public schools improve by giving them tools to address specific problems. "Instead of abandoning our schools, we should continue to support proven reform efforts," the president said Sept. 30.

The Democrats defend federal programs designed to address specific needs, such as Title I, which aims to raise the academic achievement of the nation's lowest-performing students, and the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Program, which gives grants for school efforts to combat drugs and violence.

What's more, the Democrats contend, Mr. Clinton's plan for new national tests of 4th graders' reading skills and 8th graders' math abilities will give school districts and parents yet another tool to know how well their children are learning,.

"National education tests will help parents get a more realistic picture of how their children are doing compared to other children across the country," Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said in a statement to announce that 42 Democrats are committed to filibustering a bill that does not allow the controversial plan to move forward. "They will also provide clues about how we can better education the next generation."

But it's the Republicans--joined by many liberal House Democrats--who are digging in their heels on testing. House members voted 295-195 on Sept. 16 to support an appropriations amendment that blocked test funding. Some Democrats said they don't want the tests until the federal government does more to address economic and social needs in inner cities.

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text:
Pope Is Remembered for Connecting With U.S. Youths

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When Pope John Paul II visited Immaculate Conception School in Los Angeles 18 years ago, he came with a message of support for Roman Catholic education and with rosaries for the students.

Principal Mary Ann Murphy talked about that day with a mix of pride and sadness last week as her predominantly Latino school took time to remember the legacy of the 84-year-old leader of the Catholic Church, who died April 2.

Children light candles at a memorial service for Pope John Paul II April 3, 2005 at Pope Park in Hamtramck, Michigan.
Children light candles at a memorial service for Pope John Paul II April 3, 2005 at Pope Park in Hamtramck, Michigan.
—Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

"The kids just went wild when he came," Ms. Murphy said of the pope's 1987 visit. "You would think he was their favorite rock star."

Teachers and students at Immaculate Conception and other schools were not only mourning the pope's death, but also using it as an opportunity to explore the dramatic role the Polish-born leader played on the world stage during a 26-year pontificate that included visits to more than 100 countries and what many historians view as a crucial role in helping bring a peaceful end to Communist rule in Eastern Europe.

Such attention wasn't limited to the nation's approximately 8,000 Catholic schools, which enroll some 2.4 million students. Other religious schools also marked the death of a pope who was credited with historic efforts to mend the church's relations with Jews, Muslims, and people of other faiths. Even many public schools flew their flags at half-staff last week.

Ms. Murphy said younger students in the K-8 Immaculate Conception School were making collages from photographs of Pope John Paul, while older students were exploring his teachings on social justice and discussing the process of selecting a new pope, scheduled to begin April 18. And a group of former students who were attending the school when the pope visited there came back last week to talk to current students about the experience.

At Pope John Paul II School in Chicago, banners hanging outside the building proclaim in English, Spanish, and Polish a favorite phrase of John Paul II's, taken from the New Testament: "Be not afraid." Students there were following the extensive media coverage leading up to the April 8 funeral, while many of their parents recalled the pope's visit to their parish in 1979, on one of his seven trips to the United States.

"The students are talking about death as a loss, but also as Catholics about resurrection," said Principal Beatrice Madaj.

"They have also talked about him knowing many different languages," she said. "We are a multicultural school, and they identify with that."

Mercedes Zapata, a 13-year-old 7th grader at the school, attended one of the pope's World Youth Day gatherings, held in Toronto three years ago. The massive events, which often attracted more than half a million young people in each of the several countries in which they were held—including a 1993 gathering in Denver—were seen as evidence of a deep connection between the leader of the world's estimated 1 billion Roman Catholics and many children and youths.

"I look at him as a role model," Mercedes said. "He had a great deal to do with ending Communism, and he was against the [Iraq] war and abortion. He wanted all of us to respect other religions."

Students at the Ursuline Academy in New Orleans, the oldest Catholic girls' school in the United States, have also been tuned into the detailed news coverage from Vatican City.

"This is a generation that has never gone through a death of a pope before," Principal Nancy Hernandez pointed out. "They are intrigued by it."

During a stop in New Orleans in 1987, John Paul addressed an audience of more than 1,000 Catholic educators. He encouraged teachers and administrators "to provide quality Catholic education for the poor of all races and national backgrounds, even at the cost of great sacrifice."

Michael J. Guerra, the president of the National Catholic Educational Association in Washington, said the pope's call for an inclusive system of Catholic education is even more relevant now.

"It is important for Catholic educators to be people of hope," Mr. Guerra said last week. "Because of the challenges we are dealing with, it's particularly difficult to sustain our schools where people need us the most. This is very important, and the pope reminded us of this."

Catholic schools in the United States have been hit by a spate of closings, most often in urban areas, and total enrollment has declined from 2.6 million in 2000 to 2.4 million this year. More than 100 Catholic schools were closed or consolidated this school year. ("Catholic Schools’ Mission to Serve Needy Children Jeopardized by Closings," March 9, 2005.)

Widespread Observances

Some U.S. public schools also honored John Paul II, who was born Karol Wojtyla in 1920 in Wadowice, Poland, and survived both Nazi and Soviet occupations of his country as a young man. He became a priest and eventually, during Communist rule, the archbishop of Krakow. He was elected in 1978 as the first non-Italian pope since the 15th century. He was 58 at the time of his selection, the youngest pope of the 20th century.

In Philadelphia, all flags at public schools and district offices were flown at half-staff last week at the request of Paul G. Vallas, the chief executive officer of the 190,000-student district. Governors in many states also ordered flags at all public buildings, including schools, to be flown at half-staff.

Al Frascella, the communications director for the Silver Spring, Md.-based National Council for the Social Studies, said that while his association was not providing specific advice to teachers about ways to discuss John Paul's historical and cultural impact, teaching about current events and world religions is always encouraged.

"It will be different in just about every school across the land," Mr. Frascella said about the prospect of schools' using the death of the pope as an opportunity for class discussions. "In some, there will be no mention of the pope because they are too busy teaching to the test."

John Paul II was being remembered, meanwhile, in a special way at many Jewish schools.

He was the first pope in memory to visit a synagogue, which he did in Rome in 1986, and established diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Israel. During his trip to Israel in 2000, the pope placed a written prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem seeking forgiveness for the sufferings inflicted on the Jewish people throughout history, and he made a solemn visit to the Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem.

"This is probably the first time in history that a Jewish school is speaking with a sense of loss and mourning about a pope that had an impact on Jewish consciousness and Jewish life," said Zipora Schorr, the director of education at the 1,000-student Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School in Pikesville, Md. Teachers observed a moment of silence for the pope at their daily staff meeting and prayed from the book of Psalms.

"Students want to know what is different about this pope," Ms. Schorr said. "Our job is to make sure they are not myopic, and to make them broader and see they are part of a larger universe, and a part of a brotherhood of man.

"This was a person who was truly a friend of the Jews," she continued, "and who tried to undo centuries of cultural and theological anti-Jewish sentiment. I have an obligation to teach our children this."

Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg, the leader of the Beth Tfiloh congregation, visited the pope in January with more than 100 Jewish leaders from the United States, Israel, and Europe to pay tribute to the pontiff's efforts to improve Catholics' relations with Jews. Rabbi Wohlberg said he wants Jewish students to understand the profound change the late pope brought in Catholic-Jewish understanding.

The rabbi prepared a sermon for April 9 that focused on how different John Paul II was from his predecessors in his relationship with the Jewish community, and he shared the sermon with students beforehand.

"He helped turn us from being described as 'Christ killers' to elder brothers in faith," Rabbi Wohlberg said. "This was quite a radical change."

The Muslim Community School in Potomac, Md., also paused last week to remember John Paul, who became the first pope to visit a mosque during a trip to Syria in 2001.

"We talked to the students about how he was the spiritual leader of one billion Catholics, and how he worked hard on reaching out to other faiths, including Islam," said Mahboobeh Ayat, the school's principal.

Abuse Response Faulted

H. Newton Malony, a senior professor of psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., an evangelical Christian institution, said the charismatic relationship the pope forged with young people was unique.

"Popes traditionally were thought of as pretty isolated from young people," Mr. Malony said. "This pope was countercultural. He called young people to idealism. He was a man who had a message for them. I don't think we've ever seen such an outpouring of love from young people for a pope."

But John Paul II also drew criticism for the Vatican's slow response to the priest sex-abuse scandals in the United States, which have seriously undermined the Catholic Church's reputation as a teacher and protector of children.

Such scandals have erupted from time to time over the past couple of decades, but became a full-scale crisis three years ago and led to new anti-abuse policies. The church's response remains a major issue in Catholic schools and parishes, said Margaret O'Brien Steinfels, a former editor of Commonweal, a prominent lay-edited Catholic magazine. She was one of several experts called on to address a 2002 meeting of the U.S. bishops, who convened to adopt more stringent guidelines on responding to sex abuse.

"We are a long way from this being over," Ms. Steinfels said last week, referring to the fallout from the scandals. "There is a sense from church officials that we're on the road to healing, but there is a lingering skepticism among both men and women who thought this should have been tackled back in the 1980s."

Last week, at least, such wrenching issues were not on the minds of students and teachers at John Paul II High School in Nashville, Tenn., where about 30 percent of the 530 students are not Catholic. In commemoration of the pope, the school community said the rosary together for the first time.

Drama teachers at the school, meanwhile, were discussing the pope's background in theater as a young man. In English classes, students reading George Orwell's 1984 were thinking about the pope's critiques of totalitarianism. Religion classes have explored how the pope handled illness and death, as well as his ability to forgive the man who shot him in St. Peter's Square in 1981.

A teacher at the high school who organized a recent trip to Rome, where students watched the ailing John Paul II struggle to speak from a window at the Vatican, had students perform a play she wrote about the pope's life. And for the pope's funeral on April 8, a outdoor youth mass was scheduled in the school's football stadium.

"I have always found the pope to be someone who exemplifies Jesus as teacher, Jesus as liberator of the human being, which is so much of what we do as teachers," said Hans Broekman, the school's principal and a religion teacher.

"Young people had a connection with this pope because he is authentic," he said. "There is nothing like a teenager to look through the b.s. They can tell whether a person is real or not. This pope was real, and they knew he was real."

PHOTO: Students at Pope John Paul II School, a Catholic school in Chicago, read about the death of the pope and ask questions of teacher Kathleen Szabelski. Jewish schools were among those honoring him.
—Charles Osgood/Chicago Tribune

Vol. 24, Issue 31, Page 1, 26, 27

Published in Print: April 8, 2005, as Pope Is Remembered for Connecting With U.S. Youths
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Let’s Not Forget Balance In Plotting School Success

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To the Editor:

Your paper is my weekly staple of education-related news. I have been an educator for 30-plus years and continue to be as passionate as ever about the mission of public education. As we move toward the future, we should learn from the lessons of the past.

There is little new in education. Times change, but providing a strong foundation in civics and social interaction should still be balanced with the cognitive aspects of reading, writing, and math. Good citizens must learn to negotiate relationships and solve problems for the common good. Likewise, a physically fit and well-nourished student will be better able to handle the stresses and demands of modern society.

Let us not forget the balance that is needed for success in learning and in life.

Robert T. Myers
Hagerstown, Md.

Vol. 25, Issue 15, Page 27

Published in Print: December 14, 2005, as Let’s Not Forget Balance In Plotting School Success

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Trifense wins EIT ICT Entrepreneurship Award

The EIT Awards were announced in Brussels on February 21 as part of the first Entrepreneurship Summit, organised by EIT and Science Business.

"I am very proud on the really innovative and diverse start-ups we brought to the competition", says EIT ICT Labs CEO Willem Jonker. "Each of them a worthy candidate and well presenting. I congratulate Trifense winning the first EIT Entrepreneurship Award."

The finalists in short:

The company is a spin-out from the Technical University of Berlin. The business concept is to develop defense technology driven by innovation, integrity and intelligence.  Trifense’s self-learning technology allows models of “normality” to be learnt through incoming data known as network packet payloads. In this way, any deviation from the models can be detected and unknown cyber-threats entangled with the payloads can be recognised.

The main difference between this and more traditional technology is that Trifense does not rely on any kind of pre-written description of the attack to spot the trouble coming. Protecting a company or organisation against known cyber-security threats is one thing - protecting them against unknown cyber-threats is quite another.

Watch Interview on YouTube

Smartphones are too expensive for emerging markets but the business concept of Blaast is to bring mobile apps and a smartphone user experience to the next billion people. Blaast is working together with mobile network operators in creating a unique subscription based app store offering, which offers developers recurring revenues in addition to huge subscriber bases.

Blaast provides users with a robust, well-designed and functional platform. Developers will create great apps for hundreds of devices and reach millions of users. And operators deploying Blaast will be able to convert large numbers of voice users into active data users.

Watch Interview on YouTube

Smart Signs

Ever get lost in a building? Smart Signs Solutions business idea is to develop personalised signage that can point the way for each visitor in a business, hospital or other big building

An example of the impact on society is reducing the time spent in guiding people in hospitals and improving the well-being of patients. Hospital research demonstrated that in a facility of some 800 beds, no fewer than 8,000 hours (four person-years) of professional time was lost in redirecting patients and visitors to their destinations.

This is exclusive of the time that the professionals themselves lose in trying to find their way about - particularly when they are new on the job. It does not take into account the hidden costs that result from delayed professional interventions, which may critically affect patients. Additionally, when visitors and patients have problems finding their way, they feel helpless, frustrated and stressed.

Watch Interview on YouTube

© 2010-2018 EIT Digital IVZW. All rights reserved. Legal notice. Privacy Policy.


text:
Digital Input/Output Module (DIO)

Digital Input/Output Module (DIO)

EN 50126
EN 50128
EN 50129
EN 50155
EN 45545

Dimensions (W x H x D):
4 TE x 3 U x 160 mm

179 g
Input Power:
5 V DC ± 5 % (500 mA max., 200 mA typ.)
Temperature Range (operational):
-40 °C…+70 °C
MTBF (40 ºC ambient temperature):
1 500 000 h (DIO2378A)
1 170 000 (DIO2908A) (SIL-2)
I/O Connector:
DIN41612-F48 (at front)
Host Interface:

RS 485
Number of Input-only Channels:

Number of Input/Ouput Channels:

Number of Frequency Input Channels:

Frequency Input Range:
0...32 kHz, Resolution 1 Hz

Battery Voltage Monitor:
Yes, one or two (UIC-556)
Temperature Measurement:
Yes, local CPU
Input type:

Current sink
Output Type:
High side (FET) from battery voltage
Voltage Drop:

Max. 2 V
Input/Output Voltage Range:
16.8...137.5 V DC (1 sec 14…154 V DC)
Threshold levels:
Software selectable (both, positive and negative) (either V or % Vin)
Software Selectable Wetting Current:
0 … 25 mA
Output Current:
1.0 A Continuous

module functions

The Trainnet® Digital Input/Output Module (DIO) provides a standard interface for digital input and output signals. The Trainnet® DIO receives the digital signals via its input channels and makes them available to the train computer's CPU Module. The Trainnet® DIO receives instructions from the train computer's CPU Module and sends digital signals to the sub-systems accordingly via its output channels. Separate channels are provided for frequency measurements (can be used for tachometer inputs).

The Trainnet® Digital Input/Output Module can be used as a part of a Trainnet® TCMS, VCU or Event Recorder. Alternatively, the Trainnet® DIO can be fitted in the Trainnet® Remote I/O Module (RIOM).

key features

The Trainnet® DIO has 24 input channels and 8 channels which can be used either as input channels or output channels. 2 frequency input channels are also available. Up to four outputs can be connected in parallel to increase output current.

One special feature of the DIO module is to supports the UIC-556 sleep mode. The DIO can remain active with WTB modules, and provide local inauguration and battery voltage monitoring. The module also provides emergency output short circuit protection: if the output current exceeds its maximum value, the short circuit protection shuts down the output. The status of the short circuit protection is available to the train computer's CPU module.

If the communication between the train computer’s CPU and the module fails, the module’s output channel goes to a state defined in the application software (emergency output), which can be individually set for each single channel.

The module's own 32-bit embedded processor implements diagnostics functions and reports to the train computer's CPU module if it suspects that the input values cannot be trusted. Each input channel has a common test circuit, which is used for real-time diagnostics of the channel. This test is carried out during power-on and repeated during normal operation. The input and output states, and their configuration parameters (wetting current, threshold levels) are accessible by the train computer's CPU module.

Two separate group voltages with common ground allow split behind two circuit breakers, or having a mixed voltage system. Input and Input/Output channels are split evenly between group voltage 1 and 2. Please note that the groups are not isolated from each other.

sil-2 certified

The module development is based on the railway standards EN 50126, EN 50128 and EN 50129 that are in accordance with safety integrity level SIL 2. A non-SIL certified version of the module is also available.

Published on: 2017-08-11
EKE-Electronics Ltd
Piispanportti 7
02240 Espoo
Tel +358 9 6130 30


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About the article

Hard Disk Activity Monitor

A 10-LED indicator to show how hard it’s working

Hard Disk Activity Monitor
Almost every PC case is fitted with an LED on the front panel which flickers whenever the hard disk(s) is accessed. A single flickering light is better than nothing at all but a 10-LED linear scale showing hard disk loading as a percentage would be really handy!
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Extra info / Update
• A display using 10 LEDs indicates hard drive activity
• Displays hard drive activity in 10 % steps
• Crash proof operation (independent of PC software)
• Neat compact module fits easily inside a PC case
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