Monday, November 29, 2004

Impending water tug-of-war in Central Asia?

Here's one proposal for a megaproject that doesn't seem to have moved much since it was (re)announced.

Russian scientists are reviving an old Soviet plan to divert some of Siberia's mightiest rivers [the Ob and Irtysh] to the parched former Soviet republics of central Asia.
Its backers say it will solve a growing water crisis in [central Asia] and replenish the now desiccated Aral Sea...
Recent increases in the flows of Siberia's rivers, probably due to global warming, have raised fears that a less salty Arctic Ocean could shut down the Gulf Stream and trigger icy winters across Europe. Diverting part of the flow of the rivers could prevent that.

The global warming bit is probably a ploy to garner international support, i.e. funding. According to the piece, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are growing cotton, a water-intensive crop; as a result, they have the highest water consumption per capita in the world.

Meanwhile, an NGO in Kazakhstan is getting edgy about China's increased water usage in Xinjiang as the region is developed.

Mels Eleusizov heads the Kazakh nongovernmental organization Tabigat (Nature). He said the Irtysh and Ili rivers, which both originate in mountainous areas of Xinjiang before crossing into Kazakhstan, are being increasingly drained to serve China’s needs.

It would certainly reduce the value of the Russian water diversion megaproject if the Chinese diverted the Irtysh at its source.

Monday, November 22, 2004

Why youth bulges are dangerous

According to a report by Population Action International, young adults are correlated with civil conflict:

Countries in which young adults made up a large proportion of the adult population — 40 percent or more — were more than twice as likely to experience an outbreak of civil conflict during the 1990s as those below this benchmark. These youth-bulge countries are in the developing world, where youth unemployment rates are generally three to five times that of adults.
High fertility rates coupled with declining infant mortality are the major reason for high proportions of young adults. In East Asia, proportions of young adults began to decline significantly less than two decades after fertility began its own fall.

Immature frontal lobe development seems to be a likely neurological candidate explanation. According to thie piece on teenage brains, full maturation of self-control doesn't happen until people reach their mid-20s:

Ron Dahl, a pediatrician and child psychiatric researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, says a desire for thrills and taking risks is a building block of adolescence. The frontal lobes help put the brakes on such behavior, but they're also one of the last areas of the brain to develop fully. Located right behind the forehead, the frontal lobes actually grow larger than adult size in puberty. But the process is far from complete; refinement of the frontal lobes can continue into the early 20s.

Thus, the young would tend to have a lower threshold for violence, as their brains literally have fewer checks and balances.

Thursday, November 11, 2004

Obvious in retrospect

This is an idea now obvious in retrospect that it's remarkable that SF writers didn't seem to seize upon it earlier. Perhaps the notion of machines being inflexible and humans having to adapt was part of the cyberpunk ethos.

A device that automatically moves electrodes through the brain to seek out the strongest signals is taking the idea of neural implants to a new level. Scary as this sounds, its developers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena say devices like this will be essential if brain implants are ever going to work.

In short, the device will adapt dynamically as the neurons about it shift. The brain is a dynamic, organic process, not merely a machine to plug into once and easily forgotten. Perhaps in a decade or few this type of interface will enable neurally linked cybernetic prosthetics.