Quicknote bioenergy technologyPetroSun, Inc., an algae-to-biofuels company announced today that it will conduct a three-day algae-to-biodiesel demonstration at its facilities near Auburn, Alabama. The event is currently being scheduled for early August 2007 and will be by invitation only. Participants will be required to execute Secrecy / Nondisclosure Agreements prior to admittance to the demonstration site.The purpose of the event will be to demonstrate to the alternative energy and transportation fuel industries that the cultivation of algae, extraction of algal oil and the conversion to a biofuel are possible on a commercial scale. PetroSun will provide algal oil samples and analysis to participants prior to the event for their independent studies. A diesel truck engine will be operated during the three-day demonstration from algae biodiesel produced by the company.Like others, we are sceptical of algae technology, with reason. Most of the algae companies have never proved that the technology works on a continuous basis and/or on a large scale. Some of them have seriously disappointed investors because their claims will never materialise and they have been postponing demonstrations indefinitely. Still other algae companies seem to drop press releases on a monthly basis, while in silence they are investing in ordinary terrestrial energy crops or announce fantasy concepts (just to get press attention). Some scientists go so far as to say that all of the algae companies' claims simply contradict the most basic laws of physics [*.pdf].The fact is that decades of fundamental research showed that the micro-organisms can not deliver any serious amount of energy. Lots of data from the 1970s and 1980s are available that can be compared to PetroSun's trials (an overview).Interestingly, it is no coincidence PetroSun's trials take place in the hottest and sunniest summer month of the year. Like any photosynthetic organism, the amount and intensity of sunlight determines the amount of energy that is produced in its cells.For algae, biomass productivities can be very high in summertime (with peaks of up to 37.5g/m²/per day), but drop in wintertime to negligable productivities as low as 3g/m²/day. Very few trials have ever been successfully carried out for longer than a year (most cultures became contaminated or unstable after a few days or weeks and had to be discontinued). When grown continuously during an entire year including during the autumn, winter and spring months with their low productivities, and in optimal, sunny locations (like the Negev Desert), maximum average productivities recorded in the many trials of the 1970s and 1980s were 51.1 tons of biomass per hectare, well below the productivity of ordinary terrestrial energy crops like sugarcane. Average yields were around 30 tons/ha/year: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: algae :: biodiesel :: biomass :: bioenergy :: efficiency :: With these data in mind, it will be interesting to see how well PetroSun's algae perform. The researchers from the past have often written that the maximum yields (50 tonnes/ha/year) were too low to make algae based biofuels competitive with oil at record oil prices (which stood at US$ 80/barrel back then). Costs had to come down by a factor of between 5 and 20. Since the discontinuation of most algae-biofuel research in the 1990s, there have been no major biotech breakthroughs in the field.PetroSun's trial is important but it must be stressed that a three day trial says nothing about the capacity of the technology to grow algae continuously for a whole year, and year after year, including during the winter season that seams to be a major barrier to algae-culture.It is not clear whether PetroSun's trials will be with algae grown in open raceway ponds or in closed photobioreactors. If the latter is the case, we can dismiss the technology out of hand immediately. There was a scientific consensus in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, both in Europe, the US and Japan, that such expensive bioreactors can never be cost-effective. Open ponds were seen as the only viable option, but came with many drawbacks (such as contamination with rival organisms and pollution).
Comments
"this trial will amount to nothing...all of these publicly traded penny stock algae companies are nothing but traps for naive investors. the only companies that have any chance of achieving commercial success in algae are the venture backed companies that have actual scientists"
"the only companies that have any chance of achieving commercial success in algae are the venture backed companies that have actual scientists"....
Friday, October 26, 2007
Thursday, October 25, 2007
The Fire This Time (from TIME)
The Santa Ana winds begin cold, gathering power and mass in the high desert between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Air pressure pushes the winds up and over the San Gabriel Mountains, westward toward the Pacific Ocean, until gravity takes hold. The air becomes compressed as it drops, growing hotter and dryer, stripping moisture from the ground, accelerating--sometimes past 100 m.p.h. (160 km/h)--as it squeezes through Southern California's many canyons.
The punishing gusts of the Santa Anas herald cursed weather, days and nights of devilish heat. Should a fire spark in the dry woodlands surrounding the region's cities and suburbs, the winds become a flamethrower, spreading glowing embers half a mile (800 m) or more. The Santa Anas have been midwife to the most destructive wildfires in California's history, from the Great Fire of 1889 to the 2003 disaster that blackened nearly 700,000 acres (280,000 hectares) of forest. Lifelong residents of the state know the Santa Anas and dread them. As Joan Didion has written, "The wind shows us how close to the edge we are."
This week the people of Southern California may have reached that edge. "We're in a state of shock right now," says Dr. Zab Mosenifar, director of the Cedars-Sinai Women's Guild Pulmonary Disease Institute in Los Angeles, who was preparing for an influx of smoke-inhalation victims at his hospital. "This is beyond thinking." Beginning overnight on Oct. 20, unusually fierce Santa Ana winds stoked fires that quickly burst into life throughout a dry, hot landscape. By midweek, more than 20 separate blazes formed pockets of fire running from the Mexican border north to Simi Valley outside Los Angeles. In many places, the heat and smoke were so intense that the 7,000 firefighters recruited from around the country could do little but watch. The flames consumed more than 400,000 acres (162,000 hectares), destroyed more than 2,000 houses and forced the temporary evacuation of nearly 1 million people--the biggest mass migration in the U.S. since Hurricane Katrina, and far more than were evacuated during the 2003 San Diego wildfires, previously considered California's worst.
In San Diego County, site of the worst fires, people spent a few minutes gathering some mementos before abandoning their houses ahead of the flames, seeking refuge with relatives or friends or even in Qualcomm Stadium, which went from being the home of the San Diego Chargers to a temporary shelter for more than 20,000 refugees--stirring worrisome memories of the tens of thousands who swarmed to the Superdome in New Orleans two years ago. Hotels filled quickly, highways jammed and grocery-store shelves ran bare. Some residents learned of the danger through television coverage of the fire. The images of the flames they couldn't yet see out their windows but knew were on the march only added to an atmosphere of terror. "Everyone is running around scared," said Dr. Sanjana Chaturvedi, a San Diego resident who fled her home with her husband and two children. "No one knows what to do. There is no place to go. I have no place to go."
Often the flames moved faster than the residents. When Jay Blankenbeckler went to bed the night of Oct. 21 at his home in Rancho Bernardo, he could see smoke, but the fire still seemed far away. Upon awakening early the next morning and turning on the TV, he saw a newscaster reporting in front of a blaze--one that was less than half a mile from Blankenbeckler's house. "It had already burned through an entire neighborhood," he says. "That's when I thought, 'This is real.'"
The Government Steps In
State and federal officials did their best to quell the anxiety of refugees and of people who, at least for the time being, were still in their homes. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was in full action-hero mode, traveling to the firefighters' front lines, while President George W. Bush--chastened by Washington's dilatory response to Katrina--declared the region a "major disaster" and promptly dispatched Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, along with Army helicopters, troops and millions of dollars in federal aid. San Diego city officials even implemented a reverse 911 system with automated warning calls going to residents, urging them to evacuate. This early and aggressive emptying of the region--a hard-earned lesson of the 2003 fires, which left 20 people dead--likely saved Californians' lives, if not their property. "The issue this time is not preparedness," said San Diego City Council president Scott Peters. "It's that the event is so overwhelming."
The question is, Why? Fires have always been with us and are one way nature cleans house, burning off dry vegetation and opening up old ground for new growth. So why have these natural events become natural disasters? Why do there seem to be more of them, and when they do strike, why are they ever more catastrophic?
The Development Scourge
Part of the reason Southern California has become such a dangerous place to live is that it's such an attractive place to live. The migration of people drawn to the West by the region's mountains, forests and proximity to the ocean has led to more and more new residents building houses on the shrinking borderlands between edge suburbs and untouched wilderness. More than 8.6 million Western homes have been built within 30 miles (50 km) of national forest since 1982; in California, where the population has more than tripled since 1950, in excess of 50% of new housing has been built in a severe-fire zone. That's risky for obvious reasons: if more people choose to live in areas threatened by fire, more people will be in harm's way when disaster finally strikes. But those houses, especially if owners fail to prioritize fire safety, are often more sensitive to fire than are untouched forests, and just a few scattered houses in the woods can amplify a wildfire. "Isolated homes surrounded by natural vegetation are probably the most dangerous combination for fires," says Jon Keeley, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geographical Survey (USGS). Beyond providing fuel for the flames, new dwellings also concentrate the single biggest cause of wildfires: us. The downed power lines, careless barbecues and abandoned campfires that frequently spark fires don't happen in the absence of people. And then there is the wicked wild card of arson. Perhaps only one person in a community of thousands has a hand in triggering a blaze, but the very presence of those thousands is what turns an otherwise messy event deadly. "The same fires happening wouldn't be anywhere near as serious without this development pattern," says Volker Radeloff, a forest ecologist at the University of Wisconsin.
Then, too, there's climate change. As occurred after Hurricane Katrina, the question of what role global warming might have played in the disaster arose before the fires had even begun to die down. While environmental scientists are careful not to blame the droughts or heat waves of any one season on climate change, the overwhelming majority of climate models point to more of these extreme conditions in the already dry Southwest as the planet warms. A study led by researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., and published in Science last year found that as temperatures increased in the West, which is now 1.5° (almost 1°C) warmer than it was in 1987, so did the length of the wildfire season and the size and duration of the average fire.
Fighting and Feeding The Flames
Even when we try to be smart about fires, we often just make things worse. For more than a century, the U.S. Forest Service--the federal agency responsible for combatting wildfires--has pursued a policy of stamping out blazes wherever they occur and doing so all the more aggressively as population grows in the endangered regions. For those accustomed to living in urban areas, that makes sense--the job of a city fire department is to stop blazes before they damage property. But that's not how things work in the great Western forests. Paradoxically, trying to put out every minor blaze may raise the risk for the occasional megafire since the forests are not permitted to do their important work of occasionally clearing out accumulated vegetation. This is a little like letting newspapers pile up in your kitchen: if a fire occurs, the place is primed to blow. "These larger and more severe wildfires are an unintended consequence of a suppression policy that doesn't work," says Richard Minnich, a wildfire ecologist at the University of California at Riverside. "If anything, suppression actually endangers society."
The situation was worsened by a relatively wet winter in 2004-05, which let trees and scrub grow densely, followed by extremely dry weather since, which turned the vegetation to still more fuel. In fact, this past year has seen the worst drought in Los Angeles' recorded history. Adding to the tinder were those Santa Ana winds, which strike regularly in the autumn but rarely with the power of the past week. "They usually come in small, medium and large," says Bill Patzert, a climatologist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "These were Godzilla winds."
A Losing Battle
As more houses are dispersed through the fire zone--whether summer cabins or new McMansions--both firefighters and budgets are stretched ever more thinly. Last year the Forest Service spent a record $2.5 billion fighting wildfires that burned 9.9 million acres (4 million hectares), another record. Even though California has boosted spending on firefighting since the catastrophic blazes of 2003--the state set aside $850 million for this year--when a megafire like this one strikes, officers on the ground quickly hit the limits of what they can do. "You're putting people between the unstoppable force of a wildfire and the immovable object of a home," says Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. "That's as unsafe a position as you can be in as a firefighter."
A frightening possibility is that the October wildfires may be only the start--not just of future fires in future seasons but of more to come this year. The Santa Ana winds have just begun and typically peak in the winter. What's more, there is not likely to be much relief from drought conditions. The National Weather Service predicts a La Niña pattern this winter, which occurs when sea-surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean are cooler than usual. La Niña usually translates to dryer and hotter weather in the American South.
The long-term forecast isn't any better. Few scientists expect dry areas like the Southwest to do anything but grow dryer still. The past several years have been among the dryest on record in the West, leaving the Colorado River--which supplies water to 30 million people--at its lowest level in 85 years of measurements. If the mountain snowpack that stores much of the water used by the West were to melt because of higher temperatures, all the reservoirs in the world might not be enough to keep the region wet. Even if the effects of climate change turn out to be milder than feared, the same population growth that puts people in the way of fires also strains the scarce water supplies needed to fight them. In San Diego County, home to one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the U.S., water use has risen by about 34% since 1995. "We've set ourselves up for this," says JPL's Patzert. "We've been handing out building permits without considering the requirements for water."
The Outlook
Does all this mean that the only way to stop the cycle of catastrophic forest fires is to change the way Americans live in the West? Probably--but the transition will be painful. Population growth in the affected areas has implicitly been supported by federal policies that protect private homes even if they're built in risky areas. This, in turn, has caused the Forest Service--which is supposed to perform a range of wilderness functions--to become largely a firefighting agency, devoting nearly half its budget to that one job. That has caught the eye of Congress, which wants spending to be brought under control. The loss in recent years of several firefighters who died protecting homes has further caused Washington to rethink its policies. "So much development in California has followed the pioneering spirit," says Keeley of the USGS. "But we're reaching critical limits in growth, and people have to realize that they will lose certain freedoms if they want to be safe."
Wisconsin's Radeloff says those who choose to build homes in fire zones are "gambling with high stakes--and right now many of them are losing." One answer might be to make clear to those who choose to build in the highest-risk areas that they are effectively on their own--a message the insurance industry, which has grown reluctant to protect exposed properties, is communicating to Western homeowners. But while it's easy to see that logic--and to point fingers at the very victims of the fires--this week it's impossible not to focus more on the terror and worry of those whose homes are at risk, like Lee Hamilton. By the time the 60-year-old San Diego radio personality woke to a reverse-911 call early on the morning of Oct. 22, embers were already raining over his house. Hamilton barely had time to save his 93-year-old mother and a suitcase full of insurance papers before fleeing. "When I pulled out of my driveway, my mind-set was, I was saying good-bye to all my memories," he says. "I thought the whole neighborhood was going to be leveled." When he returned the next morning, fewer than half the homes in his area had survived--including his own. But the sheer scale of the destruction in the city Hamilton has called home for 22 years has left him wondering how San Diego will go on. "I'm mostly numb. I really felt we were losing everything."
Of course, nature rarely abides apocalypse. By the time the flames finally begin to go out, the charred forests will be on their way to rebirth. "The plants will put in new growth soon," says David Weise, a project leader with the Forest Service's Forest Fire Laboratory in Riverside, Calif. "The forest is amazingly resilient."
So are people. After the devastating wildfires of 2003, 1993 and 1970, Californians rebuilt and returned to the scorched hills in ever greater numbers. No doubt they will do so again after the wildfires of 2007. But the larger question is, Should they? Inside a Wildfire
Once sparked, these blazes create their own dynamic. Add hot wind, and disaster is inevitable.
The punishing gusts of the Santa Anas herald cursed weather, days and nights of devilish heat. Should a fire spark in the dry woodlands surrounding the region's cities and suburbs, the winds become a flamethrower, spreading glowing embers half a mile (800 m) or more. The Santa Anas have been midwife to the most destructive wildfires in California's history, from the Great Fire of 1889 to the 2003 disaster that blackened nearly 700,000 acres (280,000 hectares) of forest. Lifelong residents of the state know the Santa Anas and dread them. As Joan Didion has written, "The wind shows us how close to the edge we are."
This week the people of Southern California may have reached that edge. "We're in a state of shock right now," says Dr. Zab Mosenifar, director of the Cedars-Sinai Women's Guild Pulmonary Disease Institute in Los Angeles, who was preparing for an influx of smoke-inhalation victims at his hospital. "This is beyond thinking." Beginning overnight on Oct. 20, unusually fierce Santa Ana winds stoked fires that quickly burst into life throughout a dry, hot landscape. By midweek, more than 20 separate blazes formed pockets of fire running from the Mexican border north to Simi Valley outside Los Angeles. In many places, the heat and smoke were so intense that the 7,000 firefighters recruited from around the country could do little but watch. The flames consumed more than 400,000 acres (162,000 hectares), destroyed more than 2,000 houses and forced the temporary evacuation of nearly 1 million people--the biggest mass migration in the U.S. since Hurricane Katrina, and far more than were evacuated during the 2003 San Diego wildfires, previously considered California's worst.
In San Diego County, site of the worst fires, people spent a few minutes gathering some mementos before abandoning their houses ahead of the flames, seeking refuge with relatives or friends or even in Qualcomm Stadium, which went from being the home of the San Diego Chargers to a temporary shelter for more than 20,000 refugees--stirring worrisome memories of the tens of thousands who swarmed to the Superdome in New Orleans two years ago. Hotels filled quickly, highways jammed and grocery-store shelves ran bare. Some residents learned of the danger through television coverage of the fire. The images of the flames they couldn't yet see out their windows but knew were on the march only added to an atmosphere of terror. "Everyone is running around scared," said Dr. Sanjana Chaturvedi, a San Diego resident who fled her home with her husband and two children. "No one knows what to do. There is no place to go. I have no place to go."
Often the flames moved faster than the residents. When Jay Blankenbeckler went to bed the night of Oct. 21 at his home in Rancho Bernardo, he could see smoke, but the fire still seemed far away. Upon awakening early the next morning and turning on the TV, he saw a newscaster reporting in front of a blaze--one that was less than half a mile from Blankenbeckler's house. "It had already burned through an entire neighborhood," he says. "That's when I thought, 'This is real.'"
The Government Steps In
State and federal officials did their best to quell the anxiety of refugees and of people who, at least for the time being, were still in their homes. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was in full action-hero mode, traveling to the firefighters' front lines, while President George W. Bush--chastened by Washington's dilatory response to Katrina--declared the region a "major disaster" and promptly dispatched Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, along with Army helicopters, troops and millions of dollars in federal aid. San Diego city officials even implemented a reverse 911 system with automated warning calls going to residents, urging them to evacuate. This early and aggressive emptying of the region--a hard-earned lesson of the 2003 fires, which left 20 people dead--likely saved Californians' lives, if not their property. "The issue this time is not preparedness," said San Diego City Council president Scott Peters. "It's that the event is so overwhelming."
The question is, Why? Fires have always been with us and are one way nature cleans house, burning off dry vegetation and opening up old ground for new growth. So why have these natural events become natural disasters? Why do there seem to be more of them, and when they do strike, why are they ever more catastrophic?
The Development Scourge
Part of the reason Southern California has become such a dangerous place to live is that it's such an attractive place to live. The migration of people drawn to the West by the region's mountains, forests and proximity to the ocean has led to more and more new residents building houses on the shrinking borderlands between edge suburbs and untouched wilderness. More than 8.6 million Western homes have been built within 30 miles (50 km) of national forest since 1982; in California, where the population has more than tripled since 1950, in excess of 50% of new housing has been built in a severe-fire zone. That's risky for obvious reasons: if more people choose to live in areas threatened by fire, more people will be in harm's way when disaster finally strikes. But those houses, especially if owners fail to prioritize fire safety, are often more sensitive to fire than are untouched forests, and just a few scattered houses in the woods can amplify a wildfire. "Isolated homes surrounded by natural vegetation are probably the most dangerous combination for fires," says Jon Keeley, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geographical Survey (USGS). Beyond providing fuel for the flames, new dwellings also concentrate the single biggest cause of wildfires: us. The downed power lines, careless barbecues and abandoned campfires that frequently spark fires don't happen in the absence of people. And then there is the wicked wild card of arson. Perhaps only one person in a community of thousands has a hand in triggering a blaze, but the very presence of those thousands is what turns an otherwise messy event deadly. "The same fires happening wouldn't be anywhere near as serious without this development pattern," says Volker Radeloff, a forest ecologist at the University of Wisconsin.
Then, too, there's climate change. As occurred after Hurricane Katrina, the question of what role global warming might have played in the disaster arose before the fires had even begun to die down. While environmental scientists are careful not to blame the droughts or heat waves of any one season on climate change, the overwhelming majority of climate models point to more of these extreme conditions in the already dry Southwest as the planet warms. A study led by researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., and published in Science last year found that as temperatures increased in the West, which is now 1.5° (almost 1°C) warmer than it was in 1987, so did the length of the wildfire season and the size and duration of the average fire.
Fighting and Feeding The Flames
Even when we try to be smart about fires, we often just make things worse. For more than a century, the U.S. Forest Service--the federal agency responsible for combatting wildfires--has pursued a policy of stamping out blazes wherever they occur and doing so all the more aggressively as population grows in the endangered regions. For those accustomed to living in urban areas, that makes sense--the job of a city fire department is to stop blazes before they damage property. But that's not how things work in the great Western forests. Paradoxically, trying to put out every minor blaze may raise the risk for the occasional megafire since the forests are not permitted to do their important work of occasionally clearing out accumulated vegetation. This is a little like letting newspapers pile up in your kitchen: if a fire occurs, the place is primed to blow. "These larger and more severe wildfires are an unintended consequence of a suppression policy that doesn't work," says Richard Minnich, a wildfire ecologist at the University of California at Riverside. "If anything, suppression actually endangers society."
The situation was worsened by a relatively wet winter in 2004-05, which let trees and scrub grow densely, followed by extremely dry weather since, which turned the vegetation to still more fuel. In fact, this past year has seen the worst drought in Los Angeles' recorded history. Adding to the tinder were those Santa Ana winds, which strike regularly in the autumn but rarely with the power of the past week. "They usually come in small, medium and large," says Bill Patzert, a climatologist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "These were Godzilla winds."
A Losing Battle
As more houses are dispersed through the fire zone--whether summer cabins or new McMansions--both firefighters and budgets are stretched ever more thinly. Last year the Forest Service spent a record $2.5 billion fighting wildfires that burned 9.9 million acres (4 million hectares), another record. Even though California has boosted spending on firefighting since the catastrophic blazes of 2003--the state set aside $850 million for this year--when a megafire like this one strikes, officers on the ground quickly hit the limits of what they can do. "You're putting people between the unstoppable force of a wildfire and the immovable object of a home," says Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. "That's as unsafe a position as you can be in as a firefighter."
A frightening possibility is that the October wildfires may be only the start--not just of future fires in future seasons but of more to come this year. The Santa Ana winds have just begun and typically peak in the winter. What's more, there is not likely to be much relief from drought conditions. The National Weather Service predicts a La Niña pattern this winter, which occurs when sea-surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean are cooler than usual. La Niña usually translates to dryer and hotter weather in the American South.
The long-term forecast isn't any better. Few scientists expect dry areas like the Southwest to do anything but grow dryer still. The past several years have been among the dryest on record in the West, leaving the Colorado River--which supplies water to 30 million people--at its lowest level in 85 years of measurements. If the mountain snowpack that stores much of the water used by the West were to melt because of higher temperatures, all the reservoirs in the world might not be enough to keep the region wet. Even if the effects of climate change turn out to be milder than feared, the same population growth that puts people in the way of fires also strains the scarce water supplies needed to fight them. In San Diego County, home to one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the U.S., water use has risen by about 34% since 1995. "We've set ourselves up for this," says JPL's Patzert. "We've been handing out building permits without considering the requirements for water."
The Outlook
Does all this mean that the only way to stop the cycle of catastrophic forest fires is to change the way Americans live in the West? Probably--but the transition will be painful. Population growth in the affected areas has implicitly been supported by federal policies that protect private homes even if they're built in risky areas. This, in turn, has caused the Forest Service--which is supposed to perform a range of wilderness functions--to become largely a firefighting agency, devoting nearly half its budget to that one job. That has caught the eye of Congress, which wants spending to be brought under control. The loss in recent years of several firefighters who died protecting homes has further caused Washington to rethink its policies. "So much development in California has followed the pioneering spirit," says Keeley of the USGS. "But we're reaching critical limits in growth, and people have to realize that they will lose certain freedoms if they want to be safe."
Wisconsin's Radeloff says those who choose to build homes in fire zones are "gambling with high stakes--and right now many of them are losing." One answer might be to make clear to those who choose to build in the highest-risk areas that they are effectively on their own--a message the insurance industry, which has grown reluctant to protect exposed properties, is communicating to Western homeowners. But while it's easy to see that logic--and to point fingers at the very victims of the fires--this week it's impossible not to focus more on the terror and worry of those whose homes are at risk, like Lee Hamilton. By the time the 60-year-old San Diego radio personality woke to a reverse-911 call early on the morning of Oct. 22, embers were already raining over his house. Hamilton barely had time to save his 93-year-old mother and a suitcase full of insurance papers before fleeing. "When I pulled out of my driveway, my mind-set was, I was saying good-bye to all my memories," he says. "I thought the whole neighborhood was going to be leveled." When he returned the next morning, fewer than half the homes in his area had survived--including his own. But the sheer scale of the destruction in the city Hamilton has called home for 22 years has left him wondering how San Diego will go on. "I'm mostly numb. I really felt we were losing everything."
Of course, nature rarely abides apocalypse. By the time the flames finally begin to go out, the charred forests will be on their way to rebirth. "The plants will put in new growth soon," says David Weise, a project leader with the Forest Service's Forest Fire Laboratory in Riverside, Calif. "The forest is amazingly resilient."
So are people. After the devastating wildfires of 2003, 1993 and 1970, Californians rebuilt and returned to the scorched hills in ever greater numbers. No doubt they will do so again after the wildfires of 2007. But the larger question is, Should they? Inside a Wildfire
Once sparked, these blazes create their own dynamic. Add hot wind, and disaster is inevitable.
Innocent man shares his 20-year struggle behind bars
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Willie "Pete" Williams had no idea when he was pulled over by police that the criminal justice system was about to steal away half his life.
Willie "Pete" Williams, 45, spent half of his life behind bars for a 1985 rape he did not commit.
Sitting in the flashing glow of Atlanta squad car lights along Georgia State Road 400, the 23-year-old part-time house painter didn't know police were looking for a rapist who had struck nearby three weeks earlier.
Police questioned -- and then arrested Williams, triggering a series of mistaken witness identifications that led to his unjust conviction for rape, kidnapping and aggravated sodomy.
It was 1985 and Williams was sentenced to serve 45 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. "I felt betrayed. ... I felt like these people had taken my life for something I didn't do. I felt like I was being treated unfairly. ... I felt very, very angry towards everybody," said Williams last week, a free man after nearly 22 years behind bars.
He said he spent many of those years stoking that anger by fighting guards and inmates, while his childhood friends were developing careers and raising families. Watch Williams offer more details about his prison nightmare »
Earlier this year, after DNA science proved his innocence, the 45-year-old with a graying mustache stood again before a judge -- who this time exonerated Williams.
Williams' troubling story provokes discomfort in a nation that prides itself on a justice system where the accused are innocent until proven guilty. So far, DNA evidence has directly exonerated 208 wrongly convicted people in the United States, according to the Innocence Project. It's unknown how many prisoners now locked up in American jails could be freed by new testing of DNA evidence.
A jury of Williams' peers convicted him in the April 5, 1985, rape, kidnapping and aggravated sodomy of a woman in Atlanta's Sandy Springs neighborhood.
The victim told police her attacker first approached her to ask if she could help him find someone named Paul. Then he produced a gun and forced her into her car, according to police. They then drove to a dead-end street where the assault occurred.
Because the science behind each person's unique DNA signature was new to police in 1985, the key evidence that sealed Williams' fate was the testimony of three eyewitnesses who mistakenly said they recognized him.
"Mistaken eyewitness identification has long been the single biggest factor in the conviction of innocents," said Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project.
"That has got to be important to everybody, because if we can reform identification procedures, it will keep more innocent people out of jail and convict criminals who really commit the crimes."
As a new prisoner Williams said he fought a painful struggle against the raw deal the world had dealt him. When board members denied him parole the first of three times Williams said, "they had to escort me to 'the hole' [solitary confinement]."
"I couldn't function out there around the other inmates," Williams said. "I was mad, I was bitter. I felt the whole world just gave me up."
It wasn't until 1997 -- more than a decade after he was locked away -- that Williams' own voice freed him from the grip of his anger. At Valdosta State Prison, a close friend named Charlie Brown helped him join a Christian choir -- leading him to accept Jesus.
"Singing was like being out here, in a sense. It freed me from all the things, from all the fights, from the officers who were cruel, prison, stabbings," said Williams, who especially embraced the hymn "Amazing Grace."
After singing got a hold of Williams, he said the hardest part of his heart started to dissolve.
"I didn't feel angry anymore -- or any hate."
To prevent more tragedies like Williams', innocence projects in many states, including Georgia, have begun pressing lawmakers to adopt special witness ID procedures called sequential double-blind lineups. Such lineups are administrated by officials who don't know who the suspect is and present each member of a lineup one-by-one instead of simultaneously.
Witnesses who see several potential suspects simultaneously are more likely to choose a person who looks most like the perpetrator -- but who may not actually be the perpetrator, according to the Innocence Project. The group also cites research that says misidentification is reduced if the person overseeing the lineup is "blind" to which person in the lineup is the suspect.
Georgia's Legislature held hearings Monday in Atlanta to study the research and the proposed standards, which have been adopted by New Jersey and jurisdictions in Minnesota, California and elsewhere.
Louis M. Dekmar, vice chair of the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies is skeptical of the research, but said the issue deserves further study.
"I don't believe the research is so compelling that we need to make swings and changes that don't bode well for criminal investigations and the criminal justice process," said Dekmar, a 30-year law enforcement veteran and chief of police for LaGrange, Georgia.
Dekmar argues investigators should be allowed to administer lineups to gauge reaction while they look at witness faces, to see if a witness is "stressed, weeping, nervous -- all those reactions that help detectives formulate whether this is a strong identification or a weak identification."
Williams was convicted on the identification of three witnesses who first singled him out from a photo lineup, according to the Georgia Innocence Project.
More than 20 years later, Georgia Innocence Project attorneys arranged to compare Williams' DNA with DNA evidence collected from the 1985 rape. It was not a match, proving that Williams was not the attacker and opening the door to his release.
Shortly after Williams' exoneration, DNA science again played a role in the case when a genetic match resulted in the conviction and imprisonment of Kenneth G. Wicker for the crime that Williams had been wrongly convicted of. Years earlier Wicker had served four years in prison for another rape and two attempted sexual assaults, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
As Scheck's Innocence Project marks its 15th year, the 1995 O.J. Simpson defense attorney describes it as a movement for criminal justice as well as human rights.
"I think that it's going to be remembered for getting innocents out of jail, but also for changing the paradigm in the criminal justice system," said Scheck.
"There is a greater understanding now that sound scientific and critical research can go a long way toward proving injustice and prosecuting the guilty."
Sometimes an Innocence Project client is confirmed to be guilty by DNA evidence, but the group doesn't make the number of those cases available. Theoretically, If key DNA material in a case is properly preserved, there's no time limit on revisiting old cases, according to the Innocence Project.
Critics accuse the group of denying closure to communities and victims' families by giving new life to old cases. To that, project spokesman Eric Ferrero said, "Victims are not served by the wrong people being convicted."
Perhaps the most important victory for the project has been its role in sparing the lives of 15 people condemned to death. In 2000, 13 condemned prisoners were exonerated by a group of Northwestern University students affiliated with the Innocence Project.
Some of the innocent prisoners were freed through DNA testing, others were exonerated after new trials were ordered by appellate courts.Those spared lives prompted then-Illinois Gov. George Ryan to declare a state moratorium on all executions and later, a blanket clemency of all 167 death row prisoners.
The moratorium remains in effect while Illinois authorities consider proposed reforms to the system.
Back in Georgia, during the ten months since Williams' friends and family welcomed him home with hugs and kisses, he's been taking his time rejoining society, attending electronics classes and dealing with his top complaint: 21st century traffic.
Williams has found a home in a church congregation and plans to join its choir, holding on to the spiritual anchor he formed in prison.
Money is tight for Williams, and, according to the Innocence Project, only 45 percent of those exonerated by DNA evidence have been financially compensated. He expects some compensation from Georgia, although the state has no law guiding such cases.
Regaining his freedom has renewed Williams' belief in the power of prayer, but he said it has done little to repair his faith in the nation's justice system. He wonders how many other Americans are still suffering injustices like his own.
"When I see someone on television when they say, 'this is a suspect,' I have a difficult time believing that that actually is a suspect," Williams said.
"That's how I'm affected now.
Willie "Pete" Williams, 45, spent half of his life behind bars for a 1985 rape he did not commit.
Sitting in the flashing glow of Atlanta squad car lights along Georgia State Road 400, the 23-year-old part-time house painter didn't know police were looking for a rapist who had struck nearby three weeks earlier.
Police questioned -- and then arrested Williams, triggering a series of mistaken witness identifications that led to his unjust conviction for rape, kidnapping and aggravated sodomy.
It was 1985 and Williams was sentenced to serve 45 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. "I felt betrayed. ... I felt like these people had taken my life for something I didn't do. I felt like I was being treated unfairly. ... I felt very, very angry towards everybody," said Williams last week, a free man after nearly 22 years behind bars.
He said he spent many of those years stoking that anger by fighting guards and inmates, while his childhood friends were developing careers and raising families. Watch Williams offer more details about his prison nightmare »
Earlier this year, after DNA science proved his innocence, the 45-year-old with a graying mustache stood again before a judge -- who this time exonerated Williams.
Williams' troubling story provokes discomfort in a nation that prides itself on a justice system where the accused are innocent until proven guilty. So far, DNA evidence has directly exonerated 208 wrongly convicted people in the United States, according to the Innocence Project. It's unknown how many prisoners now locked up in American jails could be freed by new testing of DNA evidence.
A jury of Williams' peers convicted him in the April 5, 1985, rape, kidnapping and aggravated sodomy of a woman in Atlanta's Sandy Springs neighborhood.
The victim told police her attacker first approached her to ask if she could help him find someone named Paul. Then he produced a gun and forced her into her car, according to police. They then drove to a dead-end street where the assault occurred.
Because the science behind each person's unique DNA signature was new to police in 1985, the key evidence that sealed Williams' fate was the testimony of three eyewitnesses who mistakenly said they recognized him.
"Mistaken eyewitness identification has long been the single biggest factor in the conviction of innocents," said Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project.
"That has got to be important to everybody, because if we can reform identification procedures, it will keep more innocent people out of jail and convict criminals who really commit the crimes."
As a new prisoner Williams said he fought a painful struggle against the raw deal the world had dealt him. When board members denied him parole the first of three times Williams said, "they had to escort me to 'the hole' [solitary confinement]."
"I couldn't function out there around the other inmates," Williams said. "I was mad, I was bitter. I felt the whole world just gave me up."
It wasn't until 1997 -- more than a decade after he was locked away -- that Williams' own voice freed him from the grip of his anger. At Valdosta State Prison, a close friend named Charlie Brown helped him join a Christian choir -- leading him to accept Jesus.
"Singing was like being out here, in a sense. It freed me from all the things, from all the fights, from the officers who were cruel, prison, stabbings," said Williams, who especially embraced the hymn "Amazing Grace."
After singing got a hold of Williams, he said the hardest part of his heart started to dissolve.
"I didn't feel angry anymore -- or any hate."
To prevent more tragedies like Williams', innocence projects in many states, including Georgia, have begun pressing lawmakers to adopt special witness ID procedures called sequential double-blind lineups. Such lineups are administrated by officials who don't know who the suspect is and present each member of a lineup one-by-one instead of simultaneously.
Witnesses who see several potential suspects simultaneously are more likely to choose a person who looks most like the perpetrator -- but who may not actually be the perpetrator, according to the Innocence Project. The group also cites research that says misidentification is reduced if the person overseeing the lineup is "blind" to which person in the lineup is the suspect.
Georgia's Legislature held hearings Monday in Atlanta to study the research and the proposed standards, which have been adopted by New Jersey and jurisdictions in Minnesota, California and elsewhere.
Louis M. Dekmar, vice chair of the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies is skeptical of the research, but said the issue deserves further study.
"I don't believe the research is so compelling that we need to make swings and changes that don't bode well for criminal investigations and the criminal justice process," said Dekmar, a 30-year law enforcement veteran and chief of police for LaGrange, Georgia.
Dekmar argues investigators should be allowed to administer lineups to gauge reaction while they look at witness faces, to see if a witness is "stressed, weeping, nervous -- all those reactions that help detectives formulate whether this is a strong identification or a weak identification."
Williams was convicted on the identification of three witnesses who first singled him out from a photo lineup, according to the Georgia Innocence Project.
More than 20 years later, Georgia Innocence Project attorneys arranged to compare Williams' DNA with DNA evidence collected from the 1985 rape. It was not a match, proving that Williams was not the attacker and opening the door to his release.
Shortly after Williams' exoneration, DNA science again played a role in the case when a genetic match resulted in the conviction and imprisonment of Kenneth G. Wicker for the crime that Williams had been wrongly convicted of. Years earlier Wicker had served four years in prison for another rape and two attempted sexual assaults, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
As Scheck's Innocence Project marks its 15th year, the 1995 O.J. Simpson defense attorney describes it as a movement for criminal justice as well as human rights.
"I think that it's going to be remembered for getting innocents out of jail, but also for changing the paradigm in the criminal justice system," said Scheck.
"There is a greater understanding now that sound scientific and critical research can go a long way toward proving injustice and prosecuting the guilty."
Sometimes an Innocence Project client is confirmed to be guilty by DNA evidence, but the group doesn't make the number of those cases available. Theoretically, If key DNA material in a case is properly preserved, there's no time limit on revisiting old cases, according to the Innocence Project.
Critics accuse the group of denying closure to communities and victims' families by giving new life to old cases. To that, project spokesman Eric Ferrero said, "Victims are not served by the wrong people being convicted."
Perhaps the most important victory for the project has been its role in sparing the lives of 15 people condemned to death. In 2000, 13 condemned prisoners were exonerated by a group of Northwestern University students affiliated with the Innocence Project.
Some of the innocent prisoners were freed through DNA testing, others were exonerated after new trials were ordered by appellate courts.Those spared lives prompted then-Illinois Gov. George Ryan to declare a state moratorium on all executions and later, a blanket clemency of all 167 death row prisoners.
The moratorium remains in effect while Illinois authorities consider proposed reforms to the system.
Back in Georgia, during the ten months since Williams' friends and family welcomed him home with hugs and kisses, he's been taking his time rejoining society, attending electronics classes and dealing with his top complaint: 21st century traffic.
Williams has found a home in a church congregation and plans to join its choir, holding on to the spiritual anchor he formed in prison.
Money is tight for Williams, and, according to the Innocence Project, only 45 percent of those exonerated by DNA evidence have been financially compensated. He expects some compensation from Georgia, although the state has no law guiding such cases.
Regaining his freedom has renewed Williams' belief in the power of prayer, but he said it has done little to repair his faith in the nation's justice system. He wonders how many other Americans are still suffering injustices like his own.
"When I see someone on television when they say, 'this is a suspect,' I have a difficult time believing that that actually is a suspect," Williams said.
"That's how I'm affected now.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Can a Lack of Sleep Cause Psychiatric Disorders
There's no question that people need their sleep: studies have linked a lack of shut-eye to everything from disruptions in the immune system to cognitive deficits to weight control.
In fact, psychologist Matthew Walker of the University of California, Berkeley, says that "almost all psychiatric disorders show some problems with sleep.'' But, he says that scientists previously believed the psychiatric problems triggered the sleep issues. New research from his lab, however, suggests the reverse is the case; that is, a lack of shut-eye is causing some psychological disturbances.
Walker's team and collaborators from Harvard Medical School reached their conclusions, published in Current Biology, after studying 26 healthy students aged 24 to 31 after either an all-nighter or a full night's sleep.
Fourteen subjects spent 35 straight hours without getting a wink before being rolled into a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanners where their brains were observed while they viewed a set of 100 photos that became increasingly disturbing as they progressed. Early slides were snapshots of an empty wicker basket on a table; the scenes changed as the series progressed, however, to more shocking settings, such as a tarantula on a person's shoulder and finally pictures of burn victims and other traumatic portraits.
The researchers mainly monitored the amygdala, a midbrain structure that decodes emotion, and observed that both sets of volunteers had a similar baseline of activity when shown the innocuous images. But, when the scenes became more gruesome, the amygdalae of the sleep-deprived participants kicked up, showing 60 percent more activity relative to the normal population's response. In addition, the researchers noticed that more than five times more neurons in the area were transmitting impulses in the sleep-deprived brains.
Walker described the heightened emotional response in the weary as "profound," noting, "We've never seen a magnitude of increase between two groups that big in any of our studies before."
The team also checked the fMRI readings to determine whether any other brain regions had a similar pattern of activity, which would indicate that the brain networks were communicating with one another. In normal participants, the amygdala seemed to be talking to the medial prefrontal cortex, an outer layer of the brain that, Walker says, helps to contextualize experiences and emotions. But, in the sleep-deprived brain, the amygdala seemed to be "rewired," coupling instead with a brain stem area called the locus coeruleus, which secretes norepinephrine, a precursor of the hormone adrenaline that triggers fight-or-flight type reactions.
"Medial prefrontal cortex is the policeman of the emotional brain," Walker says. "It makes us more rational. That top-down, inhibitory connection is severed in the condition of sleep deprivation. … The amygdala seems to be able to run amok." People in this state seem to experience a pendulum of emotions, going from upset and annoyed to giddy in moments, he says.
"There seems to be a causal relationship between impaired sleep and some of the psychiatric symptomatology and disorders that we're seeing," says Robert Stickgold, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who was not involved in this study. He cites research linking sleep apnea, in which breathing is disrupted, to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and the evidence of a connection between depression and insomnia as examples. "It might be that those medial frontal regions tell the rest of the brain, 'You can chill,'" he says. "Those circuits become exhausted or altered after a lack of sleep."
Walker says the team now plans to examine the effects of disruption of certain types of sleep, such as REM sleep or slow-wave sleep. "I think we may start to think about a new potential function for sleep," says Walker. "It does actually prepare our emotional brains for next-day social and emotional interactions."
In fact, psychologist Matthew Walker of the University of California, Berkeley, says that "almost all psychiatric disorders show some problems with sleep.'' But, he says that scientists previously believed the psychiatric problems triggered the sleep issues. New research from his lab, however, suggests the reverse is the case; that is, a lack of shut-eye is causing some psychological disturbances.
Walker's team and collaborators from Harvard Medical School reached their conclusions, published in Current Biology, after studying 26 healthy students aged 24 to 31 after either an all-nighter or a full night's sleep.
Fourteen subjects spent 35 straight hours without getting a wink before being rolled into a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanners where their brains were observed while they viewed a set of 100 photos that became increasingly disturbing as they progressed. Early slides were snapshots of an empty wicker basket on a table; the scenes changed as the series progressed, however, to more shocking settings, such as a tarantula on a person's shoulder and finally pictures of burn victims and other traumatic portraits.
The researchers mainly monitored the amygdala, a midbrain structure that decodes emotion, and observed that both sets of volunteers had a similar baseline of activity when shown the innocuous images. But, when the scenes became more gruesome, the amygdalae of the sleep-deprived participants kicked up, showing 60 percent more activity relative to the normal population's response. In addition, the researchers noticed that more than five times more neurons in the area were transmitting impulses in the sleep-deprived brains.
Walker described the heightened emotional response in the weary as "profound," noting, "We've never seen a magnitude of increase between two groups that big in any of our studies before."
The team also checked the fMRI readings to determine whether any other brain regions had a similar pattern of activity, which would indicate that the brain networks were communicating with one another. In normal participants, the amygdala seemed to be talking to the medial prefrontal cortex, an outer layer of the brain that, Walker says, helps to contextualize experiences and emotions. But, in the sleep-deprived brain, the amygdala seemed to be "rewired," coupling instead with a brain stem area called the locus coeruleus, which secretes norepinephrine, a precursor of the hormone adrenaline that triggers fight-or-flight type reactions.
"Medial prefrontal cortex is the policeman of the emotional brain," Walker says. "It makes us more rational. That top-down, inhibitory connection is severed in the condition of sleep deprivation. … The amygdala seems to be able to run amok." People in this state seem to experience a pendulum of emotions, going from upset and annoyed to giddy in moments, he says.
"There seems to be a causal relationship between impaired sleep and some of the psychiatric symptomatology and disorders that we're seeing," says Robert Stickgold, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who was not involved in this study. He cites research linking sleep apnea, in which breathing is disrupted, to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and the evidence of a connection between depression and insomnia as examples. "It might be that those medial frontal regions tell the rest of the brain, 'You can chill,'" he says. "Those circuits become exhausted or altered after a lack of sleep."
Walker says the team now plans to examine the effects of disruption of certain types of sleep, such as REM sleep or slow-wave sleep. "I think we may start to think about a new potential function for sleep," says Walker. "It does actually prepare our emotional brains for next-day social and emotional interactions."
Thursday, October 18, 2007
DNA Discoverer: Blacks Less Intelligent Than Whites
One of the world's most eminent scientists has created a racial firestorm in Britain.
James D. Watson, 79, co-discoverer of the DNA helix and winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in medicine, told the Sunday Times of London that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really."
He recognized that the prevailing belief was that all human groups are equal, but that "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true."
• Click here to read the full Sunday Times of London profile.
Acknowledging that the issue was a "hot potato," the lifelong Democrat and avowed secular humanist nonetheless said his beliefs were not an excuse to discriminate against blacks.
"There are many people of color who are very talented," said Watson, "but don't promote them when they haven't succeeded at the lower level."
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/**/
He told the interviewer, a former student of his, that he had recently inaugurated a DNA learning center near Harlem, and would like to have more black researchers at his lab, "but there's no one to recruit."
• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Human Body Center.
• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Natural Science Center.
Steven Rose, a professor of biological sciences at the Open University in Britain, was quick to dismiss Watson's comments.
"This is Watson at his most scandalous, " Rose told the Times of London. "If he knew the literature in the subject, he would know he was out of his depth scientifically, quite apart from socially and politically."
Watson is the former director and current chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory biological-research institution on New York's Long Island, and both admired and infamous for bluntly speaking his mind.
In a British television documentary in 2003, Watson advised eliminating low intelligence through gene therapy.
"If you are really stupid, I would call that a disease," said Watson, according to New Scientist magazine. "The lower 10 percent who really have difficulty, even in elementary school, what's the cause of it?
"A lot of people would like to say, 'Well, poverty, things like that.' It probably isn't," he added. "So I'd like to get rid of that, to help the lower 10 percent."
He also touched upon sexual attraction in the same TV program.
"People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty," Watson said. "I think it would be great."
In 2000, he told a lecture audience at U.C. Berkeley that there was a correlation between a population's exposure to sunlight and its sex drive.
"That's why you have Latin lovers," Watson said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. "You've never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient."
The notion that intelligence tests and other scientific evidence shows that racial groups differ in intelligence, at least statistically, is not a new one.
It last gained popular attention in 1994 with "The Bell Curve," a best-selling book written by Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein (who died before publication) and political scientist Charles Murray, which argued that intelligence was more important than socio-economic background or education in achieving success in American life.
The book does not explicitly ascribe a genetic, racial connection to intelligence, but Murray in his publicity tour to promote the book cited studies that human intelligence could be ranked by ancestry, with East Asians and European Jews leading the way.
That view was more clearly stated in 1995 by British-Canadian psychologist J. Philippe Rushton, whose "Race, Evolution and Behavior: A Life History Perspective" quantified dozens of differences between blacks, whites and Asians.
In the 1970s, electronics pioneer William Shockley, who won the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics, said that the human race would suffer as less intelligent people outbred more intelligent ones, with the greatest damage to occur in the black American population.
Most sociologists, geneticists and psychologists reject the notion of racial differences in intelligence, pointing out that economic and social factors clearly influence IQ test scores.
The issue of race itself is scientifically controversial, with some arguing that it is a meaningless term and others saying that consistent traits occur among individuals of shared ancestry.
Watson is currently in Britain promoting his just-published new volume of memoirs, "Avoid Boring People: Lessons From a Life in Science."
"There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically," he writes. "Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."
James D. Watson, 79, co-discoverer of the DNA helix and winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in medicine, told the Sunday Times of London that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really."
He recognized that the prevailing belief was that all human groups are equal, but that "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true."
• Click here to read the full Sunday Times of London profile.
Acknowledging that the issue was a "hot potato," the lifelong Democrat and avowed secular humanist nonetheless said his beliefs were not an excuse to discriminate against blacks.
"There are many people of color who are very talented," said Watson, "but don't promote them when they haven't succeeded at the lower level."
Related
Stories
Chicago Researchers Look for 'Gay Gene'
Two Americans, Briton Win Nobel Prize in Medicine for 'Knockout Mice'
DNA Tests Help Determine Dog Breeds
Pinot Noir Grape More Genetically Complex Than Humans
/**/
He told the interviewer, a former student of his, that he had recently inaugurated a DNA learning center near Harlem, and would like to have more black researchers at his lab, "but there's no one to recruit."
• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Human Body Center.
• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Natural Science Center.
Steven Rose, a professor of biological sciences at the Open University in Britain, was quick to dismiss Watson's comments.
"This is Watson at his most scandalous, " Rose told the Times of London. "If he knew the literature in the subject, he would know he was out of his depth scientifically, quite apart from socially and politically."
Watson is the former director and current chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory biological-research institution on New York's Long Island, and both admired and infamous for bluntly speaking his mind.
In a British television documentary in 2003, Watson advised eliminating low intelligence through gene therapy.
"If you are really stupid, I would call that a disease," said Watson, according to New Scientist magazine. "The lower 10 percent who really have difficulty, even in elementary school, what's the cause of it?
"A lot of people would like to say, 'Well, poverty, things like that.' It probably isn't," he added. "So I'd like to get rid of that, to help the lower 10 percent."
He also touched upon sexual attraction in the same TV program.
"People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty," Watson said. "I think it would be great."
In 2000, he told a lecture audience at U.C. Berkeley that there was a correlation between a population's exposure to sunlight and its sex drive.
"That's why you have Latin lovers," Watson said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. "You've never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient."
The notion that intelligence tests and other scientific evidence shows that racial groups differ in intelligence, at least statistically, is not a new one.
It last gained popular attention in 1994 with "The Bell Curve," a best-selling book written by Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein (who died before publication) and political scientist Charles Murray, which argued that intelligence was more important than socio-economic background or education in achieving success in American life.
The book does not explicitly ascribe a genetic, racial connection to intelligence, but Murray in his publicity tour to promote the book cited studies that human intelligence could be ranked by ancestry, with East Asians and European Jews leading the way.
That view was more clearly stated in 1995 by British-Canadian psychologist J. Philippe Rushton, whose "Race, Evolution and Behavior: A Life History Perspective" quantified dozens of differences between blacks, whites and Asians.
In the 1970s, electronics pioneer William Shockley, who won the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics, said that the human race would suffer as less intelligent people outbred more intelligent ones, with the greatest damage to occur in the black American population.
Most sociologists, geneticists and psychologists reject the notion of racial differences in intelligence, pointing out that economic and social factors clearly influence IQ test scores.
The issue of race itself is scientifically controversial, with some arguing that it is a meaningless term and others saying that consistent traits occur among individuals of shared ancestry.
Watson is currently in Britain promoting his just-published new volume of memoirs, "Avoid Boring People: Lessons From a Life in Science."
"There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically," he writes. "Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."
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