For the first time, a detailed portrait of America’s least literate adults is emerging. About 30 million people – 14 percent of the US population 16 and older – have trouble with basic reading and writing. Correlating factors that were explored in a new government report include poverty, ethnicity, native language background, and disabilities. Of these 30 million people, 7 million are considered ‘nonliterate’ in English because their reading abilities are so low. When shown the label for an over-the-counter drug, for instance, many in this subgroup cannot read the word ‘adult’ or a sentence explaining what to do in the event of an overdose. Adult literacy ‘is a core social issue that if we could fix as a nation, we would make inroads into fixing many other social problems,’ says David Harvey, president and CEO of ProLiteracy, an advocacy group based in Syracuse, N.Y. ‘Low literacy levels are correlated with higher rates of crime, problems with navigating the healthcare system, problems with financial literacy. We know that some of the folks who signed subprime mortgages didn’t understand what they were signing.’ In the coming months, Congress is expected to retool and reauthorize the Workforce Investment […]
As countries and industries grow increasingly overwhelmed by wave after wave of bankruptcies, layoffs, restructurings, botched contracts, and embarrassing bonuses, they might lose sight of a second, much larger set of tsunamis gathering force over the horizon. While the economy is melting down, technology is moving forward at an even faster rate. The ability to adapt to the accelerating pace of change will determine who survives. To use the current bailout jargon, at least three major technologies are shovel-ready: the programming of tissues, the ability to engineer cells, and robots. As these breakthroughs and others converge, we are going to see a massive restructuring of global economic power. *** We can now program life. Several months ago, researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute and Synthetic Genomics took a mycoplasma cell and inserted long strands of DNA into it, making the cell an entirely different species. In January 2008, the same team built and inserted the world’s largest organic molecule into a cell-this is the equivalent of a complete software package to program cells. One year later they produced thousands of these programs in a single day. Taken together, these discoveries mean that one can write […]
To change the bulbs in the 60-foot-high ceiling lights of Buckingham Palace’s grand stairwell, workers had to erect scaffolding and cover precious portraits of royal forebears. So when a lighting designer two years ago proposed installing light emitting diodes or LEDs, an emerging lighting technology, the royal family readily assented. The new lights, the designer said, would last more than 22 years and enormously reduce energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions – a big plus for Prince Charles, an ardent environmentalist. Since then, the palace has installed the lighting in chandeliers and on the exterior, where illuminating the entire facade uses less electricity than running an electric teakettle. In shifting to LED lighting, the palace is part of a small but fast-growing trend that is redefining the century-old conception of lighting, replacing energy-wasting disposable bulbs with efficient fixtures that are often semi-permanent, like those used in plumbing. Studies suggest that a complete conversion to the lights could decrease carbon dioxide emissions from electric power use for lighting by up to 50 percent in just over 20 years; in the United States, lighting accounts for about 6 percent of all energy use. A recent report by McKinsey & […]
WASHINGTON — A national poll indicates that most Americans are receptive to having more government influence over their health care in return for lower costs and more coverage. Congress may take up health care reform this year. Congress may take up health care reform this year. Sixty-three percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Friday said they would favor an increase in the federal government’s influence over their own health care plans in an attempt to lower costs and provide coverage to more Americans; 36 percent were opposed. The poll also suggests that slightly more than six out of 10 think the government should guarantee health care for all Americans, with 38 percent opposed. But Americans appear to be split over raising taxes to increase coverage. Forty-seven percent of those questioned support raising taxes in order to provide health insurance to all Americans. An equal amount back the idea of keeping taxes at current levels but not providing health insurance for all Americans. ‘Will the health-care debate be different this time?’ CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider asked. ‘It does look like public sentiment has shifted. But government does not […]
Melting of the Greenland ice sheet this century may drive more water than previously thought toward the already threatened coastlines of New York, Boston, Halifax, and other cities in the northeastern United States and in Canada, according to new research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The study, which will be published Friday in Geophysical Research Letters, finds that if Greenland’s ice melts at moderate to high rates, ocean circulation by 2100 may shift and cause sea levels off the northeast coast of North America to rise by about 12 to 20 inches (about 30 to 50 centimeters) more than in other coastal areas. The research builds on recent reports that have found that sea level rise associated with global warming could adversely affect North America, and its findings suggest that the situation is more threatening than previously believed. ‘If the Greenland melt continues to accelerate, we could see significant impacts this century on the northeast U.S. coast from the resulting sea level rise,’ says NCAR scientist Aixue Hu, the lead author. ‘Major northeastern cities are directly in the path of the greatest rise.’ A study in Nature Geoscience in March warned that warmer […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
