Thursday, October 23, 2003
Authentic Happiness - Using the New Positive Psychology Martin Seligman was arguing on BBCF radio 4's "All in the Mind" this week about positive psychology (remember Marie Jahoda did a book on Positive Mental Health many decades ago, but positive psychology is now something new). Seligman offers online various psychometric tests, and suggestions about how to build life around one's core strengths. On radio interview he sounded sensible.
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Paper on social foundations of innovation Innovation is a social process
The discussion of economic innovation, education, etc is unremarkable, but this paper has an interesting social innovatio story in it:
set "in the east end of Montreal, where high school
drop out rates for young men are as high as 50 percent. About 15 years ago, Richard
Tremblay, a researcher at the University of Montreal, started a major long-term study.
He introduced a two-year program of counselling for six year-old boys and their families
to help the boys manage their anger and learn pro-social skills (Vitaro, Brendgen and
Tremblay, 1999 and 2001). The cost for each boy for the two years was $2000. Richard
has been tracking these boys, who are now in their early 20s. He also tracked a control
group of boys who had the same symptoms but did not receive the counselling.
To Richard’s surprise, there were no big differences between the two groups of boys for
several years. But by age 17, there were some remarkable differences. Drop out rates for
the boys who had received the counselling (11 percent) were half the average for the
control group. In addition, their track records on substance abuse, physical aggression,
vandalism, and theft were also much better. Dramatic differences in their pathways
through life have continued.
Now, you would think that with evidence like this, there would be a truly smart social
program here. But Richard tells me that there are no schools in Montreal that provide
this counselling. And drop-out rates are as high as ever.
These two anecdotes illustrate how much room there is for innovation in all parts of our
society. Innovations in the form of affordable housing and caregiver compensation could
have made all the difference to Nancy and her two daughters. And given the shortage of
nurses in Toronto these days, I suspect she would be fully employed today in the
profession for which she was trained.
Innovations in the form of counselling for six year-old boys who need it would help those
boys to avoid the risky social behaviours that lead them into a downward spiral, which
will be hard to reverse when these boys reach their late teens. An investment of $2000 at
ages 6 and 7 yields a high return in the form of more successful high school graduate
with choices about whether to study or work.
Innovation is a social process
The lack of innovation in social policy in Canada is obviously impoverishing some
people. But it is impoverishing our whole society because people like Nancy and those
boys do not get a chance to be productive members of their communities.
This is why I argue that innovation is a social process. As I said early on, there are social
dynamics at the root of almost all innovation through the social learning which occurs in
the workplace and in economic clusters. People interacting with each other create the
new ideas that lead to new products and processes to take to market. But innovation is
also a social process in the sense that the more we do to ensure that every citizen can live
up to their full potential, the greater our total economic potential will be. And the greater
will be the total well-being of Canadians as a collectivity.
Over the past 20 years, we have worked very hard as a country to put our economic house
in order. But over the same period, we have, slowly but surely, eroded the social
infrastructure which underlies innovation. For the people caught in this undertow, this
can lead to poverty and social distress. There are dead-weight costs associated with this
distress – the costs of welfare, health care, the justice system, and so on. Smart social
policy would avoid these dead-weight costs. It would make investments designed to
enable more Canadians to play the innovation game, and to cope with the periods of
misfortune associated with the double-edged economy...."
The discussion of economic innovation, education, etc is unremarkable, but this paper has an interesting social innovatio story in it:
set "in the east end of Montreal, where high school
drop out rates for young men are as high as 50 percent. About 15 years ago, Richard
Tremblay, a researcher at the University of Montreal, started a major long-term study.
He introduced a two-year program of counselling for six year-old boys and their families
to help the boys manage their anger and learn pro-social skills (Vitaro, Brendgen and
Tremblay, 1999 and 2001). The cost for each boy for the two years was $2000. Richard
has been tracking these boys, who are now in their early 20s. He also tracked a control
group of boys who had the same symptoms but did not receive the counselling.
To Richard’s surprise, there were no big differences between the two groups of boys for
several years. But by age 17, there were some remarkable differences. Drop out rates for
the boys who had received the counselling (11 percent) were half the average for the
control group. In addition, their track records on substance abuse, physical aggression,
vandalism, and theft were also much better. Dramatic differences in their pathways
through life have continued.
Now, you would think that with evidence like this, there would be a truly smart social
program here. But Richard tells me that there are no schools in Montreal that provide
this counselling. And drop-out rates are as high as ever.
These two anecdotes illustrate how much room there is for innovation in all parts of our
society. Innovations in the form of affordable housing and caregiver compensation could
have made all the difference to Nancy and her two daughters. And given the shortage of
nurses in Toronto these days, I suspect she would be fully employed today in the
profession for which she was trained.
Innovations in the form of counselling for six year-old boys who need it would help those
boys to avoid the risky social behaviours that lead them into a downward spiral, which
will be hard to reverse when these boys reach their late teens. An investment of $2000 at
ages 6 and 7 yields a high return in the form of more successful high school graduate
with choices about whether to study or work.
Innovation is a social process
The lack of innovation in social policy in Canada is obviously impoverishing some
people. But it is impoverishing our whole society because people like Nancy and those
boys do not get a chance to be productive members of their communities.
This is why I argue that innovation is a social process. As I said early on, there are social
dynamics at the root of almost all innovation through the social learning which occurs in
the workplace and in economic clusters. People interacting with each other create the
new ideas that lead to new products and processes to take to market. But innovation is
also a social process in the sense that the more we do to ensure that every citizen can live
up to their full potential, the greater our total economic potential will be. And the greater
will be the total well-being of Canadians as a collectivity.
Over the past 20 years, we have worked very hard as a country to put our economic house
in order. But over the same period, we have, slowly but surely, eroded the social
infrastructure which underlies innovation. For the people caught in this undertow, this
can lead to poverty and social distress. There are dead-weight costs associated with this
distress – the costs of welfare, health care, the justice system, and so on. Smart social
policy would avoid these dead-weight costs. It would make investments designed to
enable more Canadians to play the innovation game, and to cope with the periods of
misfortune associated with the double-edged economy...."
Friday, October 17, 2003
Innovation in the Public Sector Paper by Dave Albury for the Strategy Unit. Whiles searching for this I found a number of other interesting pieces, including a:
rather light "how to" paper by Gror in Innovation Journal which relates to a book on policy innovation.
rather light "how to" paper by Gror in Innovation Journal which relates to a book on policy innovation.
Workshop on involving consumers in health research - Dave Albury ran it. Note parallels to the grant-Pearce/Hills/Miles paper on PREST website, based on a research project on this issue. Consumers in health research Paper end with links to US site of relevance: www.nimh.nih.gov/research/bridge.htm and
www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/nih.
www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/nih.
Thursday, October 16, 2003
R&D and policies EC eport on how IT research influences its policymaking. Case Studies include e-Work effects on family life; job mobility in the global e-Economy; Making e-Business sustainable: Helping SMEs participate in the e-Economy: Promoting regional development through innovation - and Predicting the future of the e-Economy!
VoxPolitics - net campaigning and e-democracy says it all really - its a blog with much interesting material on IT and politics in particular.
DEMOS publications online ; for example on mobile technology. educational standards, community organisations...Demos - Catalogue Info
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
BBC - Radio 4 - History On this wbsite for a while, "The Long View" broadcastb Oct 14, contains a marvellous discussion of CHEATING AND DRUGS IN SPORT. This uses the historical case of Choppy Warburton, cycling guru (Svegali more like) of the 1890's as a basis to discuss issues. There is even a very rare instance of a little airtime given to the view that performance enhancement could be OK - that the case against blanket bans is very naive. Nothing about non-enhancing recreational drugs though (presumably soem might boost chess - stimulants for example).
Google Watch This is a site with much critical material about Google, esp the way in which this service keeps an eye on users - especially those, like me, who've fallen in love with the enhanced toolbar. Indidentally, the NPR radio station in the US (npr.org) this morning ran a very interesting interview about how Google functions with one of the key honchos there. Most NPR stuff can be retrieved from archives, and very good some of it is too (including the science, music and culture slots).
The following link takes you to an excellent analysis by Peter Swann and Bruce Tether of what we can deduce from the CIS data concerning how firms use (or dont use) information from, and how they collaborate with (or not) the University and public science sector. CRIC Discussion Paper 64 - Abstract
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
OECD science systems project: a set of publications including case studies of changes in public science in 6 countries: Management of Public Research
Intellectual Property Rights Proceedings of OECD conference on IPR, Economic Performance and Innovation - interesting to see whether heterodox views are slipping in 9as they seem to have done in even WIPO recently...
A whole book (collected essays) on infosoc, available from Finland: INFORMATIONAL SOCIETIES
a set of position papers from Syracuse University - papers on digital divides
Thursday, October 09, 2003
Perspectives on Accounting for IT in Business Performance - nice case studies, strong messages, no really critical overview Knowledge@Wharton - Microsoft
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
Havenworks runs a series of interesting news-related pages - plus material on privacy, computers, cartoons, etc. SCI-TECH NEWS SCIENCE NEWS TECHNOLOGY NEWS | HavenWorks.com/science News Best Search Engines, Reference, News, and Quality Links
Nature-nurture revisited!
A Pregnant Mother's Diet May Turn the Genes Around
"Methylation is nature's way of allowing environmental
factors to tweak gene expression without making permanent
mutations, Dr. Jirtle said.
Fleeting exposure to anything that influences methylation
patterns during development can change the animal or person
for a lifetime. Methyl groups are entirely derived from the
foods people eat. And the effect may be good or bad.
Maternal diet during pregnancy is consequently very
important, but in ways that are not yet fully understood.
For his experiment, Dr. Jirtle chose a mouse that happens
to have a transposon right next to the gene that codes for
coat color. The transposon induces the gene to overproduce
a protein that turns the mice pure yellow or mottled yellow
and brown. The protein also blocks a feeding control center
in the brain. Yellow mice therefore overeat and tend to
develop diabetes and cancer.
To see if extra methylation would affect the mice, the
researchers fed the animals a rich supply of methyl groups
in supplements of vitamin B12, folic acid, choline and
betaine from sugar beets just before they got pregnant and
through the time of weaning their pups. The methyl groups
silenced the transposon, Dr. Jirtle said, which in turn
affected the adjacent coat color gene. The babies, born a
normal brownish color, had an inherited predisposition to
obesity, diabetes and cancer negated by maternal diet.
Unfortunately the scientists do not know which nutrient or
combination of nutrients silence the genes, but noted that
it did not take much. The animals were fed only three times
as much of the supplements as found in a normal diet.
"If you looked at the mouse as a black box, you could say
that adding these methyl-rich supplements to our diets
might reduce our risk of obesity and cancer," Dr. Jirtle
said. But, he added, there is strong reason for caution.
The positions of transposons in the human genome are
completely different from the mouse pattern. Good maps of
transposons in the human genome need to be made, he said.
For that reason, it may be time to reassess the way the
American diet is fortified with supplements,.."
A Pregnant Mother's Diet May Turn the Genes Around
"Methylation is nature's way of allowing environmental
factors to tweak gene expression without making permanent
mutations, Dr. Jirtle said.
Fleeting exposure to anything that influences methylation
patterns during development can change the animal or person
for a lifetime. Methyl groups are entirely derived from the
foods people eat. And the effect may be good or bad.
Maternal diet during pregnancy is consequently very
important, but in ways that are not yet fully understood.
For his experiment, Dr. Jirtle chose a mouse that happens
to have a transposon right next to the gene that codes for
coat color. The transposon induces the gene to overproduce
a protein that turns the mice pure yellow or mottled yellow
and brown. The protein also blocks a feeding control center
in the brain. Yellow mice therefore overeat and tend to
develop diabetes and cancer.
To see if extra methylation would affect the mice, the
researchers fed the animals a rich supply of methyl groups
in supplements of vitamin B12, folic acid, choline and
betaine from sugar beets just before they got pregnant and
through the time of weaning their pups. The methyl groups
silenced the transposon, Dr. Jirtle said, which in turn
affected the adjacent coat color gene. The babies, born a
normal brownish color, had an inherited predisposition to
obesity, diabetes and cancer negated by maternal diet.
Unfortunately the scientists do not know which nutrient or
combination of nutrients silence the genes, but noted that
it did not take much. The animals were fed only three times
as much of the supplements as found in a normal diet.
"If you looked at the mouse as a black box, you could say
that adding these methyl-rich supplements to our diets
might reduce our risk of obesity and cancer," Dr. Jirtle
said. But, he added, there is strong reason for caution.
The positions of transposons in the human genome are
completely different from the mouse pattern. Good maps of
transposons in the human genome need to be made, he said.
For that reason, it may be time to reassess the way the
American diet is fortified with supplements,.."
