<![CDATA[WHY NOT MAGAZINE

<![CDATA[WHY NOT MAGAZINE - NEWS]]>Fri, 18 May 2012 11:31:13 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[Gulf countries continue to create jobs, a study shows]]>Mon, 09 Apr 2012 02:09:50 -0800http://whynotmagazine.com/4/post/2012/04/gulf-countries-continue-to-create-jobs-a-study-shows.htmlSaudi Arabia is the leader in job creation, thanks to its strong economic growth and massive government investment.

The Gulf region continues to create jobs despite, according to a survey by Dubai-based online recruitment firm, GulfTalent.com.

The 2012 edition of “Employment and Salary Trends in the Gulf” released today by GulfTalent.com shows that Saudi Arabia is the leader in job creation, thanks to its strong economic growth and massive government investment. Some 62% of firms increased their headcount last year compared with 55% in 2010, the survey shows. Next was Oman, where 56% of firms created new jobs, 1% down on the previous year.

Qatar also saw 51% of employers creating new jobs, reflecting the continued strength of the Qatari economy. In Kuwait, the percentage of firms that created new jobs in 2011 more than doubled compared to 2010, rising by 26% to reach 51%. Over the same period, the UAE also saw the number of firms creating new jobs jump by 15% to reach 37%.

The GulfTalent.com survey also revealed that Dubai’s share of regional recruitment activity has started to increase after two years of slowdown, due to a combination of jobs growth and churn.

In Bahrain, however, severe political tensions continue to negatively impact the job market. According to GulfTalent.com, only 8% of firms reported any new jobs being created last year, down from 23% in 2010.

The survey highlights that the oil and gas, healthcare and retail sectors are enjoying the largest headcount expansion, while banking and construction fare the worst.

UAE and Qatar remain prime destinations for expats

GulfTalent.com’s survey shows that the UAE and Qatar remain prime destinations for expatriates, with Saudi Arabia in third place. According to the survey findings, the UAE strengthened its position as the most popular destination among Gulf-based expatriates, with Dubai overwhelmingly remaining the most attractive city.

Qatar remained in second place in terms of popularity with expatriates. Hit by domestic unrest, Bahrain dropped from 4th place to become the Gulf’s least attractive destination for expatriates in 2011, behind Kuwait and Oman.

The study also shows that, as a result of Western countries facing high unemployment and low pay rises, employers in the Gulf are finding it easier to hire Western nationals rather than Asian candidates. However, according to interview findings, some employers are facing difficulty attracting Western candidates because they perceive the region to be unsafe, following widespread media coverage of the Arab Spring.

This year’s survey also highlights the fact that governments across the region are making the nationalisation of expatriate jobs a top priority and are embracing various schemes to do this. The survey noted that more innovative approaches are now being tried in some Gulf countries, introducing elements of choice, competition and commercial incentive.

Salaries remain stable - modest increase expected in 2012

Across the GCC, average private sector salary increase has remained stable but much lower than pre-recession levels, according to GulfTalent.com. Oman saw the highest salary increase in 2011 (6.5%) prompted in part by widespread strikes by Omani nationals and a pay hike awarded by the government to public sector employees. Saudi Arabia and Qatar saw increases of 6.0% and 5.6% respectively on the back of strong economic developments. The UAE experienced an average increase of 4.9%, while Bahrain had the region’s lowest salary increase, of only 4.5%.

However, real salary increases, consisting of average pay rise net of inflation, was highest in the UAE and Bahrain. In real terms, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had the lowest salary increases.

Among job categories, human resource professionals enjoyed the highest pay rise, while administration and marketing were the lowest. Among sectors, healthcare and retail offered the highest pay rises, while real estate had the lowest.

In 2012, Gulf employers expect similar salary increases to last year, with Qatar leading the way.

]]><![CDATA[Harvard Business School Survey Reveals Deepening U.S. Competitiveness Problem]]>Sun, 26 Feb 2012 02:23:16 -0800http://whynotmagazine.com/4/post/2012/02/harvard-business-school-survey-reveals-deepening-us-competitiveness-problem.htmlSurvey of nearly 10,000 alumni incorporates opinions of global executives in leadership and decision-making roles – 71 percent of whom expect U.S. competitiveness to decline over the next three years

Harvard Business School (HBS) today revealed the results of its first Survey on U.S. Competitiveness, which examines the position and trajectory of the United States as a competitive location in the global marketplace. The survey reveals that, while 57 percent see the current U.S. business environment as somewhat or much better than the average advanced economy, respondents are much less optimistic about the trajectory of the U.S. as a competitive location. When asked to assess how the trajectory of the U.S. business environment compares with emerging markets, 66 percent see the U.S. falling behind, while just 8 percent see it pulling ahead. Along with HBS Dean Nitin Nohria, Professors Michael E. Porter and Jan W. Rivkin presented the findings at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Porter and Rivkin designed and conducted the survey in partnership with Abt SRBI, a leading research firm. Full results are available at hbs.edu/competitiveness/survey.

The survey also examines the desirability of the U.S. as a business location and decisions by firms to relocate existing activities or establish new ones. Of 1,767 cases where respondents had been personally involved in U.S.-related location decisions within the past year, 57 percent considered the possibility of moving existing activity out of the U.S., while only 9 percent considered moving existing activities into the U.S. The remaining 34 percent weighed decisions to set up new activities. Of those offshoring decisions that had been resolved by the time of the survey, the U.S. lost the activity 84 percent of the time. While the country fared better in potential onshoring or new activity decisions (75 percent and 51 percent win-rates, respectively), its overall win record totals just 32 percent.

"The U.S. is losing out on business location decisions at an alarming rate, and those activities being offshored are more job-rich than those coming in," said Porter, the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard and head of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at HBS. "However, the U.S. retains its core strengths in a number of important areas such as university education, innovation, and entrepreneurship, which means that we have the resources to reverse this trend. The vast amount of data from this survey highlights the need for business leaders, policymakers, and academics to collaborate on practical ways to make progress."

The survey is part of the School's ongoing U.S. Competitiveness Project, which defines competitiveness as "the ability of companies in the U.S. to compete successfully in the global economy while supporting high and rising living standards for Americans."

"When we were first laying the groundwork for this Project and this survey, we thought long and hard about how competitiveness should be defined, and why it was such an important goal for the nation's future," said Dean Nohria. "We made sure not to focus on job growth or inequality alone, because that ignores the need for healthy wages that will support America's middle class. Adopting a broader definition was paramount in this effort."

Other major findings include:

While the negative view of the future of U.S. competitiveness is widely shared among respondents, different perceptions across groups exist. For instance, respondents between the ages of 40 and 60 are most likely to expect a decline (more than 70 percent thought so) and least likely to foresee a gain (less than 15 percent). Similarly, alumni in America are more pessimistic about the country's future competitiveness than their counterparts outside the U.S.
Of activities reported to have been moved out of the country in the past, 11 percent consisted of 1,000 or more jobs, while only 5 percent of activities considered for movement but retained in the U.S. consisted of 1,000 or more jobs (none moving to the U.S. consisted of 1,000 or more jobs).
Of the 1,005 location decisions about potentially moving out of the U.S., the most common alternatives considered were China (42 percent), India (38 percent), Brazil (15 percent), Mexico (15 percent), and Singapore (12 percent).

The survey also asked respondents about the greatest impediments their firms faced in investing in and creating jobs in the United States. Policy-related factors like regulation and taxes are cited as major factors, along with talent-related issues like personnel cost and immigration issues.

"One of the most important aspects of this survey was its effort to pinpoint the roots of the country's competitiveness problem," said Rivkin, the School's Bruce V. Rauner Professor of Business Administration. "The findings allow us to assess whether individual elements of the U.S. business environment, such as the complexity of our tax code or our K-12 education system, each strengthens or weakens U.S. competitiveness. This provides important insight for leaders who are seeking ways to boost America's long-run prosperity."

Since the Project seeks to inspire action among leaders – especially business leaders – to change the trajectory of U.S. competitiveness, research by HBS faculty and other scholars will continue to focus on key dimensions of U.S. competitiveness, including innovation, manufacturing, entrepreneurship, company location choices, firm governance, local business ecosystems, human capital, K-12 education, fiscal policy, tax policy, capital markets, environmental sustainability, democracy, and international trade. These findings will be presented in a special March 2012 issue of the Harvard Business Review.

Scholars and practitioners contributing to research efforts include Steve Charnovitz, George Washington University; Stacey M. Childress, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Mihir A. Desai, HBS; Daniel C. Esty, Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and Yale Law School; Robin Greenwood, HBS; Rosabeth Moss Kanter, HBS; Thomas A. Kochan, MIT Sloan School of Management; Robert Z. Lawrence, Harvard Kennedy School; Josh Lerner, HBS; David A. Moss, HBS; Gary P. Pisano, HBS; Jan W. Rivkin, HBS; Michael E. Porter, HBS; William A. Sahlman, HBS; David S. Scharfstein, HBS; Willy C. Shih, HBS; Richard H.K. Vietor, HBS; and Matthew C. Weinzierl, HBS.

Professors' profiles and abstracts of their research are available at www.hbs.edu/competitiveness.

]]><![CDATA[The Emotional Oracle Effect ]]>Sun, 26 Feb 2012 02:16:15 -0800http://whynotmagazine.com/4/post/2012/02/the-emotional-oracle-effect.htmlStudy reveals that individuals who trust their feelings are consistently able to predict future events more accurately than people who do not trust their feelings — a finding called the emotional oracle effect.

A forthcoming article in the Journal of Consumer Research by Professor Michel Tuan Pham, Kravis Professor of Business, Marketing, Columbia Business School; Leonard Lee, Associate Professor, Marketing, Columbia Business School; and Andrew Stephen, PhD ’09, currently Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh, finds that a higher trust in feelings may result in more accurate predictions about a variety of future events. The research will also be featured in Columbia Business School’s Ideas at Work in late February 2012. In the research, the researchers conducted a series of eight studies in which their participants were asked to predict various future outcomes, including the 2008 U.S. Democratic presidential nominee, the box–office success of different movies, the winner of American Idol, movements of the Dow Jones Index, the winner of a college football championship game, and even the weather. Despite the range of events and prediction horizons (in terms of when the future outcome would be determined), the results across all studies consistently revealed that people with higher trust in their feelings were more likely to correctly predict the final outcome than those with lower trust in their feelings. The researchers call this phenomenon the emotional oracle effect.

Across studies, the researchers used two different methods to manipulate or measure how much individuals relied on their feelings to make their predictions. In some studies, the researchers used an increasingly standard trust–in–feelings manipulation originally developed by Tamar Avnet, PhD ’04 and Professor Michel Pham based on earlier findings by Norbert Schwarz of the University of Michigan and his colleagues. In other studies, the researchers simply measured how much participants typically relied on their feelings in general when making predictions. Regardless of the method used, participants who trusted their feelings in general or were induced to trust their feelings experimentally were more accurate in their predictions compared to participants with lower trust in their feelings and participants in a control group.

In one study involving the Clinton–Obama contest in 2008, high–trust–in–feelings respondents predicted correctly for Obama about 72 percent of the time compared with low–trust respondents, who predicted for Obama about 64 percent of the time — a striking result given that major polls reflected a very tight race between Clinton and Obama at that time. For the winner of American Idol, the difference was 41 percent for high–trust–in–feelings respondents compared to 24 percent for low–trust respondents. In another study participants were even asked to predict future levels of the Dow Jones stock market index. Those who trusted their feelings were 25 percent more accurate than those who trusted their feelings less.

The researchers explain their findings through a “privileged window” hypothesis. Professor Michel Pham elaborates on the hypothesis. “When we rely on our feelings, what feels ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ summarizes all the knowledge and information that we have acquired consciously and unconsciously about the world around us. It is this cumulative knowledge, which our feelings summarize for us, that allows us make better predictions. In a sense, our feelings give us access to a privileged window of knowledge and information — a window that a more analytical form of reasoning blocks us from.”

In accordance with the privileged window hypothesis, the researchers caution that some amount of relevant knowledge appears to be required to more accurately forecast the future. For example, in one study participants were asked to predict the weather. While participants who trusted their feelings were again better able to predict the weather, they were only able to do so for the weather in their own zip codes, not for the weather in Beijing or Melbourne. Professor Leonard Lee explains this is because “…they don’t possess a knowledge base that would help them to make those predictions.” As another example, only participants who had some background knowledge about the current football season benefited from trust in feelings in predicting the winner of the national college football BCS game.

Thus, if we have a proper knowledge base, the future need not be totally indecipherable if we simply learn to trust our feelings.

]]><![CDATA[Here comes the sun…]]>Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:51:15 -0800http://whynotmagazine.com/4/post/2012/02/here-comes-the-sun.htmlScientists have developed a new kind of solar cell which could capture significantly more of the energy from the sun than current cells.

New solar cells could increase the maximum efficiency of solar panels by over 25%, according to scientists from the University of Cambridge.

Scientists from the Cavendish Laboratory, the University’s Department of Physics, have developed a novel type of solar cell which could harvest energy from the sun much more efficiently than traditional designs. The research, published today in the journal NanoLetters, could dramatically improve the amount of useful energy created by solar panels.

Solar panels work by absorbing energy from particles of light, called photons, which then generate electrons to create electricity. Traditional solar cells are only capable of capturing part of the light from the sun and much of the energy of the absorbed light, particularly of the blue photons, is lost as heat. This inability to extract the full energy of all of the different colours of light at once means that traditional solar cells are incapable of converting more than 34% of the available sunlight into electrical power.

The Cambridge team led by Professor Neil Greenham and Professor Sir Richard Friend has developed a hybrid cell which absorbs red light and harnesses the extra energy of blue light to boost the electrical current. Typically, a solar cell generates a single electron for each photon captured. However, by adding pentacene, an organic semiconductor, the solar cells can generate two electrons for every photon from the blue light spectrum. This could enable the cells to capture 44% of the incoming solar energy.

Bruno Ehrler, the lead author on the paper, said: “Organic and hybrid solar cells have an advantage over current silicon-based technology because they can be produced in large quantities at low cost by roll-to-roll printing. However, much of the cost of a solar power plant is in the land, labour, and installation hardware. As a result, even if organic solar panels are less expensive, we need to improve their efficiency to make them competitive. Otherwise, it’d be like buying a cheap painting, only to find out you need an expensive frame.”

Mark Wilson, another author on the paper, said: “I think it’s very important that we move towards sustainable sources of energy, and it’s exciting to help explore possible solutions.”

Dr. Akshay Rao, co-author on the paper noted: “This is just the first step towards a new generation of solar cells and we are very excited to be a part of this effort.”

The research was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

]]><![CDATA[Straight from the gut: Microbes can cause obesity ]]>Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:56:47 -0800http://whynotmagazine.com/4/post/2012/02/straight-from-the-gut-microbes-can-cause-obesity.htmlObesity and chronic liver disease can be triggered by a family of proteins that alter populations of microbes in the stomach, a discovery that suggests the condition may be infectious, Yale scientists report. The study, in the advance online publication of Nature (www.nature.com), expands on earlier Yale research that showed how similar microbial imbalances caused by the same family of proteins increases the risk of intestinal diseases such as colitis.

The Yale scientists’ most extraordinary finding, they said, was that the altered intestinal environment that led to obesity and liver disease was infectious among the community of mice. "When healthy mice were co-housed with mice that had altered gut microbes, the healthy mice also developed a susceptibility for development of liver disease and obesity," said senior author Richard A. Flavell, professor of immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

The proteins in question are called inflammasomes. They are responsible for launching the immune system’s inflammatory response. Inflammasomes act as sensors and regulators of the microbial environment of the intestines.

The Yale team found that a deficiency in components of two particular inflammasomes in mice resulted in the development of an altered microbial community associated with increased bacteria. This determined the severity of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and obesity in the mice.

NAFLD is the result of metabolic syndrome, a collection of disorders that includes obesity and diabetes, and is the leading cause of chronic liver disease in the western world. It is estimated that up to 30 million people suffer from NAFLD in the United States alone. Twenty percent of people with NAFLD develop chronic liver inflammation, placing them at risk for cirrhosis and liver cancer, but the causes have been unclear.

The next step, Flavell said, is extending this research to humans and to identify more precisely the bacteria involved in the progression to liver disease. "We found, in mice, that targeted antibiotic treatment brought the microbial composition back to normal, and thus eased the liver disease. Our hope is that our findings may eventually lead to a treatment for humans.

The researchers who led this project in Flavell’s laboratory are Jorge Henao-Mejia, Eran Elinav, and Chengcheng Jin. Other participating researchers were Liming Hao, Wajahat Z. Mehal, Till Strowig, Christoph A. Thaiss, Stephanie C. Eisenbarth, Michael J. Jurczak, Joao-Paulo Camporez, and Gerald I. Shulman of Yale; Andrew L. Kau and Jeffrey I. Gordon of Washington University School of Medicine; and Hal M. Hoffman of the University of California at San Diego.

The study was supported by grants from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, United States-Israel Binational Foundation, the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America, the National Institutes of Health, a VA Merit Award, and the Claire and Emmanuel G. Rosenblatt Award from the American Physicians for Medicine in Israel Foundation. Postdoctoral fellowships were provided by The Cancer Research Institute, and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

]]><![CDATA[Even in the healthy, stress causes brain to shrink, Yale study shows]]>Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800http://whynotmagazine.com/4/post/2012/01/even-in-the-healthy-stress-causes-brain-to-shrink-yale-study-shows.htmlExperiencing stressful life events, such as a divorce or job loss, can reduce gray matter in critical regions of the brain that regulate emotion and important physiological functions — even in healthy individuals, Yale researchers report in a study published online the week of Jan. 9 in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

The brain imaging study of more than 100 healthy subjects suggests these differences are apparent soon after stressful events occur and may serve as warning signals of future psychiatric disorders and chronic diseases, such as hypertension and diabetes, said Rajita Sinha, the Foundations Fund Professor of Psychiatry, and professor in the Department of Neurobiology and the Yale Child Study Center.

Chronic abuse, trauma, and stress have been linked to changes in brain structure and function in animals and to psychiatric disorders such as addiction, depression, and anxiety in humans. However, the effects of stress on brains of healthy individuals have been unclear. Yale researchers decided to look at the volume of gray matter — the tissue containing nerve cells and their branching projections called dendrites — in a group of community participants.

The team conducted magnetic resonance imaging scans of 103 healthy subjects who had been interviewed about traumatic stress and adverse life events, such as the death of a loved one, loss of a home to natural disaster, job loss or divorce. They found that even the brains of subjects who had only recently experienced a stressful life event showed markedly lower gray matter in portions of the medial prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that regulates not only emotions and self-control, but physiological functions such as blood pressure and glucose levels.

“The accumulation of stressful life events may make it more challenging for these individuals to deal with future stress, particularly if the next demanding event requires effortful control, emotion regulation, or integrated social processing to overcome it,” said Emily Ansell, assistant professor of psychiatry and lead author of the study.

Sinha said that the study illustrates the need to address causes of stress in life “and find ways to deal with the emotional fallout.”

“The brain is dynamic and plastic and things can improve — but only if stress is dealt with in a healthy manner,” Sinha said. “If not, the effects of stress can have a negative impact on both our physical and mental health.”

Other Yale-affiliated authors of the study are Kenneth Rando, Kerit Tuit, and Joseph Guarnaccia.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health

]]><![CDATA[MIT researchers find critical speed above which birds and drones are sure to crash]]>Sat, 21 Jan 2012 01:15:15 -0800http://whynotmagazine.com/4/post/2012/01/mit-researchers-find-critical-speed-above-which-birds-and-drones-are-sure-to-crash.htmlThe northern goshawk is one of nature’s diehard thrill-seekers. The formidable raptor preys on birds and small mammals, speeding through tree canopies and underbrush to catch its quarry. With reflexes that rival a fighter pilot’s, the goshawk zips through a forest at high speeds, constantly adjusting its flight path to keep from colliding with trees and other obstacles.

While speed is a goshawk’s greatest asset, researchers at MIT say the bird must observe a theoretical speed limit if it wants to avoid a crash. The researchers found that, given a certain density of obstacles, there exists a speed below which a bird — and any other flying object — has a fair chance of flying collision-free. Any faster, and a bird or aircraft is sure to smack into something, no matter how much information it has about its environment. A paper detailing the results has been accepted to the IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation.

These findings may not be news to the avian world, but Emilio Frazzoli, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, says knowing how fast to fly can help engineers program unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to fly at high speeds through cluttered environments such as forests and urban canyons.

Frazzoli is part of an interdisciplinary team that includes biologists at Harvard University, who are observing flying behaviors in goshawks and other birds, and roboticists at MIT, who are engineering birdlike UAVs. With Frazzoli’s mathematical contributions, the team hopes to build fast, agile UAVs that can move through cluttered environments — much like a goshawk streaking through the forest.

Speedy intuition

Most UAVs today fly at relatively slow speeds, particularly if navigating around obstacles. That’s mainly by design: Engineers program a drone to fly just fast enough to be able to stop within the field of view of its sensors.

“If I can only see up to five meters, I can only go up to a speed that allows me to stop within five meters,” Frazzoli says. “Which is not very fast.”

If the northern goshawk flew at speeds purely based on what it could immediately see, Frazzoli conjectures that the bird would not fly as fast. Instead, the goshawk likely gauges the density of trees, and speeds past obstacles, knowing intuitively that, given a certain forest density, it can always find an opening through the trees.

Frazzoli points out that a similar intuition exists in downhill skiing.

“When you go skiing off the path, you don’t ski in a way that you can always stop before the first tree you see,” Frazzoli says. “You ski and you see an opening, and then you trust that once you go there, you’ll be able to see another opening and keep going.”

Frazzoli says that in a way, robots may be programmed with this same speedy intuition. Given some general information about the density of obstacles in a given environment, a robot could conceivably determine the maximum speed below at it can safely fly.

Forever flying

Toward this end, Frazzoli and PhD student Sertac Karaman developed mathematical models of various forest densities, calculating the maximum speed possible in each obstacle-filled environment.

The researchers first drew up a differential equation to represent the position of a bird in a given location at a given speed. They then worked out what’s called an ergodic model representing a statistical distribution of trees in the forest — similar to those commonly used by ecologists to characterize the density of a forest. In an ergodic forest, while the size, shape and spacing of individual trees may vary, their distribution in any given area is the same as any other area. Such models are thought to be a fair representation of most forests in the world.

Frazzoli and Karaman adjusted the model to represent varying densities of trees, and calculated the probability that a bird would collide with a tree while flying at a certain speed. The team found that, for any given forest density, there exists a critical speed above which there is no “infinite collision-free trajectory.” In other words, the bird is sure to crash. Below this speed, a bird has a good chance of flying without incident.

“If I fly slower than that critical speed, then there is a fair possibility that I will actually be able to fly forever, always avoiding the trees,” Frazzoli says.

The team’s work establishes a theoretical speed limit for any given obstacle-filled environment. For UAVs, this means that no matter how good robots get at sensing and reacting to their environments, there will always be a maximum speed they will need to observe to ensure survival.

The researchers are now seeing if the theory bears out in nature. Frazzoli is collaborating with scientists at Harvard, who are observing how birds fly through cluttered environments — in particular, whether a bird will choose not to fly through an environment that is too dense. The team is comparing the birds’ behavior with what Frazzoli’s model can predict. So far, Frazzoli says preliminary results in pigeons are “very encouraging.”

In the coming months, Frazzoli also wants to see how close humans can come to such theoretical speed limits. He and his students are developing a first-person flying game to test how well people can navigate through a simulated forest at high speeds.

“What we want to do is have people play, and we’ll just collect statistics,” Frazzoli says. “And the question is, how close to the theoretical limit can we get?”

]]><![CDATA[Bowlers strike with a hot hand, too]]>Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800http://whynotmagazine.com/4/post/2012/01/bowlers-strike-with-a-hot-hand-too.htmlIs the so-called hot hand phenomenon in sports a reality or just an illusion based on misperception of random sequences? For the second time in recent months, a Yale study supports the notion that it is real. The study appears online in the journal PLoS One.

The “hot hand” phenomenon refers to the belief that an athlete is more likely to make successful shots if the previous shots were successful. But until recently, there was no scientific evidence to support the existence of this phenomenon.

Last October, Gur Yaari, computational biologist at Yale School of Medicine, and colleague Shmuel Eisenmann demonstrated the existence of the phenomenon in basketball. They showed that there was a significant increase in basketball players’ chances of hitting the second free throw in a two-shot series compared to the first one, and that the probability of hitting the second shot is greater following a hit than a miss. It was unclear, however, whether there was a cause and effect (causal) connection between the result of one shot and the next.

In a new study, Yaari and colleague Gil David of the Yale Department of Mathematics showed that the “hot hand” phenomenon exists among bowlers as well. They also found evidence that the phenomenon is not due to a causal feedback mechanism, commonly referred to as “success breeds success,” but is a consequence of large fluctuations in player performances over time that result in some bad games and some very good games.

The researchers analyzed large amounts of data from the Professional Bowling Association, studying the results from available records of the top 100 players.

The performances of individual players fluctuated significantly. Researchers noted that within each game successes (strikes) and failures (non-strikes) were not necessarily clustered together, but spread out uniformly.

They found that although the result of one frame does not directly influence the next (a strike does not “cause” another strike and a miss does not “cause” another miss), it was clear that getting strikes in one game made it more likely that a player would get more strikes in that game – hence the presence of the “hot hand” phenomenon.

Researchers showed that such correlations in good and bad games can be used to improve the prediction power of the last frames in a game based on the scores in the beginning.

“The observed correlation allows us to improve our ability to predict the result of the last frames of a game based on the series of preceding frames,” Yaari explained. “The fact that a player had good results in the first eight frames of a game indicates that the probability of bowling a strike in the last two frames will be higher.”

So what causes the “hot hand” phenomenon? The Yale team said there is more research to be done.

“Our study shows that a player's performance is not affected by the results of previous trials, but rather by other factors,” Yaari said. “It shows that in contrast to previous belief, athlete's results could not be explained by pure random independent process. This opens the door for future studies addressing the question of what really cause athletes to perform better and how could they use this kind of knowledge to improve their performance.”

]]><![CDATA[Hopes for reversing age associated effects in MS patients]]>Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800http://whynotmagazine.com/4/post/2012/01/hopes-for-reversing-age-associated-effects-in-ms-patients.htmlNew research highlights the possibility of reversing ageing in the central nervous system for multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. The study was published in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

As we get older, our bodies’ ability to regenerate decreases. This is not only true for our skin (which is evident in the wrinkles that develop as we age) but also true for other tissues in the body, including the regenerative processes in the brain. For diseases which often span several decades and are affected by regenerative processes, such as multiple sclerosis, this can have massive implications.

In multiple sclerosis, the insulating layers that protect nerve fibres in the brain, known as myelin sheaths, become damaged. The loss of myelin in the brain prevents nerve fibres from sending signals properly and will eventually lead to the loss of the nerve fibre itself. However, early in the disease, a regenerative process, or remyelination, occurs and the myelin sheaths are restored. Unfortunately, as people with MS age, remyelination decreases significantly, resulting in more nerve fibres being permanently lost.

However, a new study in mice shows that the age-associated decline in the regeneration of the nerve's myelin sheath, or remyelination, is reversible. The proof of principle study demonstrates that when old mice are exposed to the inflammatory cells (called monocytes) from young mice, the ageing remyelination process can be reversed.

Professor Robin Franklin, Director of the MS Society’s Cambridge Centre for Myelin Repair at the University of Cambridge, said: “What we have shown in our study, carried out in collaboration with Dr Amy Wagers and colleagues at Harvard University, is that the age-associated decline in remyelination is reversible. We found that remyelination in old adult mice can be made to work as efficiently as it does in young adult mice.

“For individuals with MS, this means that in theory regenerative therapies will work throughout the duration of the disease. Specifically, it means that remyelination therapies do not need to be based on stem cell transplantation since the stem cells already present in the brain and spinal cord can be made to regenerate myelin - regardless of the patient’s age.”

MS affects approximately 100,000 people in the United Kingdom, 400,000 in the United States and several million worldwide. Symptoms of the disease can include the loss of physical skills, sensation, vision, bladder control, and intellectual abilities.

]]><![CDATA[MIT: The case of the missing gas mileage ]]>Fri, 06 Jan 2012 07:04:41 -0800http://whynotmagazine.com/4/post/2012/01/mit-the-case-of-the-missing-gas-mileage.htmlAutomakers have made great strides in fuel efficiency in recent decades — but the mileage numbers of individual vehicles have barely increased. An MIT economist explains the conundrum.

Contrary to common perception, the major automakers have produced large increases in fuel efficiency through better technology in recent decades. There’s just one catch: All those advances have barely increased the mileage per gallon that autos actually achieve on the road.

Sound perplexing? This situation is the result of a trend newly quantified by MIT economist Christopher Knittel: Because automobiles are bigger and more powerful than they were three decades ago, major innovations in fuel efficiency have only produced minor gains in gas mileage.

Specifically, between 1980 and 2006, the average gas mileage of vehicles sold in the United States increased by slightly more than 15 percent — a relatively modest improvement. But during that time, Knittel has found, the average curb weight of those vehicles increased 26 percent, while their horsepower rose 107 percent. All factors being equal, fuel economy actually increased by 60 percent between 1980 and 2006, as Knittel shows in a new research paper, “Automobiles on Steroids,” just published in the American Economic Review.

Thus if Americans today were driving cars of the same size and power that were typical in 1980, the country’s fleet of autos would have jumped from an average of about 23 miles per gallon (mpg) to roughly 37 mpg, well above the current average of around 27 mpg. Instead, Knittel says, “Most of that technological progress has gone into [compensating for] weight and horsepower.”

And considering that the transportation sector produces more than 30 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, turning that innovation into increased overall mileage would produce notable environmental benefits. For his part, Knittel thinks it is understandable that consumers would opt for large, powerful vehicles, and that the most logical way to reduce emissions is through an increased gas tax that leads consumers to value fuel efficiency more highly.

“When it comes to climate change, leaving the market alone isn’t going to lead to the efficient outcome,” Knittel says. “The right starting point is a gas tax.”

Giving the people what they want

While auto-industry critics have long called for new types of vehicles, such as gas-electric hybrids, Knittel’s research underscores the many ways that conventional internal-combustion engines have improved.

Among other innovations, as Knittel notes, efficient fuel-injection systems have replaced carburetors; most vehicles now have multiple camshafts (which control the valves in an engine), rather than just one, allowing for a smoother flow of fuel, air and exhaust in and out of engines; and variable-speed transmissions have let engines better regulate their revolutions per minute, saving fuel.

To be sure, the recent introduction of hybrids is also helping fleet-wide fuel efficiency. Of the thousands of autos Knittel scrutinized, the most fuel-efficient was the 2000 Honda Insight, the first hybrid model to enter mass production, at more than 70 mpg. (The least fuel-efficient car sold in the United States that Knittel found was the 1990 Lamborghini Countach, a high-end sports car that averaged fewer than nine mpg).

To conduct his study, Knittel drew upon data from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, auto manufacturers and trade journals. As those numbers showed, a major reason fleet-wide mileage has only slowly increased is that so many Americans have chosen to buy bigger, less fuel-efficient vehicles. In 1980, light trucks represented about 20 percent of passenger vehicles sold in the United States. By 2004, light trucks — including SUVs — accounted for 51 percent of passenger-vehicle sales.

“I find little fault with the auto manufacturers, because there has been no incentive to put technologies into overall fuel economy,” Knittel says. “Firms are going to give consumers what they want, and if gas prices are low, consumers are going to want big, fast cars.” And between 1980 and 2004, gas prices dropped by 30 percent when adjusted for inflation.

The road ahead

Knittel asserts that given consumer preferences in autos, larger changes in fleet-wide gas mileage will occur only when policies change, too. “It’s the policymakers’ responsibility to create a structure that leads to these technologies being put toward fuel economy,” he says.

Among environmental policy analysts, the notion of a surcharge on fuel is widely supported. “I think 98 percent of economists would say that we need higher gas taxes,” Knittel says.

Instead, the major policy advance in this area occurring under the current administration has been a mandated rise in CAFE standards, the Corporate Average Fuel Economy of cars and trucks. In July, President Barack Obama announced new standards calling for a fleet-wide average of 35.5 mpg by 2016, and 54.5 mpg by 2025.

According to Knittel’s calculations, the automakers could meet the new CAFE standards by simply maintaining the rate of technological innovation experienced since 1980 while reducing the weight and horsepower of the average vehicle sold by 25 percent. Alternately, Knittel notes, a shift back to the average weight and power seen in 1980, along with a continuation of the trend toward greater fuel efficiency, would lead to a fleet-wide average of 52 mpg by 2020.

That said, Knittel is skeptical that CAFE standards by themselves will have the impact a new gas tax would. Such mileage regulations, he says, “end up reducing the cost of driving. If you force people to buy more fuel-efficient cars through CAFE standards, you actually get what’s called ‘rebound,’ and they drive more than they would have.” A gas tax, he believes, would create demand for more fuel-efficient cars without as much rebound, the phenomenon through which greater efficiency leads to potentially greater consumption.

Fuel efficiency, Knittel says, has come a long way in recent decades. But when it comes to getting those advances to have an impact out on the road, there is still a long way to go.

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