On the 25th anniversary of publication, we post Jesse Ausubel’s 1992 essay “Intellectual Migrations and Global Universities,” which accurately foresaw saturation of domestic markets leading to aggressive globalization of USA universities.
News
Shrinking footprint of meat in US
“The Shrinking Footprint of American Meat” by Iddo Wernick and Jesse Ausubel is published by The Breakthrough Institute. We estimate that between 1969 and 2014 the amount of cropland used for raising land meat for Americans fell by nearly a third: around 9 million acres, about the size of Maryland. The data used for the calculation can be found here.
Using different Feed Conversion Ratios (FCRs) for the calculation yields different results for the amount of cropland used (or spared). For a detailed discussion of the factors involved in converting animal feed into animal live weight and edible meat, see Smil, Vaclav, 2013, Should We Eat Meat? Evolution and Consequences of Modern Carnivory, Wiley-Blackwell.
Ocean Exploration Forum Final Report
The Final Report of the 2016 National Ocean Exploration Forum (NOEF) has been posted on the updated NOEF website. The site includes the reports of the small groups that developed plans for campaigns of exploration to the Arctic, Gulf of Mexico, and Southeast US Atlantic Bight as well as the slides from the orientation lectures about these regions, slides from the lectures about tools for geology, acoustics, biology, and telepresence, and the discussion papers prepared for the Forum.
A short press release describes the Final Report.
SuBastian and the Roboats . Pp. 28-31 in Final Report of the 2016 National Ocean Exploration Forum: Beyond the Ships 2020–2025. 2017 (Slightly abridged version published in Sea Technology 58(1):7, January 2017.)
Thanks to Amelie Walker Yung for the great site redesign and to Alan Curry for overseeing the entire NOEF project.
The Forum and its Report are fruits of the Monmouth University-Rockefeller University marine science and policy initiative.
Taipei Acer Meeting
On 4 January 2017, PHE Researcher Iddo Wernick delivered the keynote address ‘Creating a circular economy: The challenges and opportunities presented by Technology Metals for future business‘ kicking off a conference on the topic of Sustainable Resource Management organized by Acer Inc., in Taipei, Taiwan. Iddo also gave a talk on ‘Conflict Minerals and Tantalum’ from the perspective of Supply Chain managers in the electronics industry. Below are some pictures of the event.
eDNA Seawater
On September 13, 2016 Jesse delivered a lecture on Marine biodiversity revealed by extracellular DNA in seawater as part of the conference celebrating the 70th birthday of Russia’s Shirshov Institute of Oceanology. Thanks to Mark Stoeckle, who leads PHE’s eDNA work.
Deep Carbon Observatory videos
The Deep Carbon Observatory, which Jesse Ausubel has helped create and manage, offers some new short, enjoyable videos about its work. For example,
Reviews of The Seasons
Galatee’s The Seasons, on which Jesse Ausubel served as a science advisor, earns good reviews.
Review: The Nature Documentary ‘Seasons’ Looks at Land Animals New York Times
‘Seasons’ takes a visually dazzling journey into the animal kingdom Los Angeles Times –
‘Seasons‘ takes a gorgeous, unfiltered look at the animal kingdom Washington Post–Nov 22, 2016
Community College Research Center 20th anniversary with Jill Biden
During 1996, on behalf of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Jesse Ausubel helped Prof. Thomas Bailey establish the Community College Research Center at Teachers College. The influential center celebrated its 20th anniversary on 17 November 2016 with a symposium highlighted by a talk by Dr. Jill Biden, 2nd Lady of the USA and professor at Northern Virginia Community College. For Jesse’s role, please watch minutes 10 to 18 of this video:
https://livestream.com/teacherscollegecolumbiauniversity/CCRC20
Below are TC President Susan Fuhrman, Prof. Bailey, Prof. Biden, Anne Ausubel (who worked at TC during the late 1960s and early 1970s), and Jesse Ausubel.
Dutch life hours worked
“The reduction in life hours of work since 1850: estimates for Dutch males” by Jaap de Koning follows the 1995 paper by Jesse Ausubel and Arnulf Gruebler Working less and living longer: Long-term trends in working time and time budgets.
de Koning finds the number of hours Dutchmen work during their lives gradually diminished. Men born in 1840 worked on average 118 thousands hours, while it is only 67 thousands hours for the 1950 cohort. As a percent of total number of hours available to a man, the decline is from 23% for the 1840 birth cohort to 9%for the 1950 birth cohort. The finding resembles what Jesse and Arnulf found for American males. Technology lifts productivity and lengthens lives, and the changed ratio of work to life explains many of the benefits and worries of modern societies.
Robert Ballard talk at National Ocean Exploration Forum 2016
Dr. Robert Ballard’s inspiring speech about ocean exploration begins at the 16-minute mark in this video from the 2016 National Ocean Exploration Forum held at the Rockefeller University 20-21 October.
We also post the Op-ed for the Marine Technology Society by VADM Gaffney (ret.) summarizing the findings of the 2016 National Ocean Exploration Forum.