News – Shinichiro Yano

The Economist 3/30

I like reading the Economist. Thanks to this journal, I can know about what is going on the world. I will write what I am interested in from this week’s the Economist.

India Economy : Nobody doubts that China has joined the ranks of the great powers. But, nevertheless its huge potential, India does not show their strength so much. In my opinion, as far as soft power is concerned, India is one of powerful countries. While China is aging rapidly and worker’s population will decrease, India has relatively young and also growing. However, they have also several problem, such as the right of women, unstable periphery. I would like to know more about this country which can become a great power undoubtedly.

Global Warming : Some Recent several terrible natural disasters may remind us Global warming may be one of reason. But some scientists are arguing that man-made climate change is not quite so bad a threat as it appeared to be a few years ago. It is difficult to judge whether this is true or not. However, we have already started several projects and we could not go back to. The world still needs to deal with it.

Heathrow Airport : Last year, when Britain’s government was being lobbied to revive controversial plan to expand Heathrow airport. For me, surprisingly, having predicted just before the financial crisis that 495m passengers a year would want to use Britain’s airports by 2030, it now puts the potential damand by then just 320m. More than 100m would pass through British airport, however, we can tell how hard the financial crisis damage of this area. Among the developed countries, the number of passengers is expanding. I actually don’t understand the relation between the number of passengers and economic development. Why the number of passengers keep growing? Especially like in Britain, Japan, there seems to be few chance to grow.

The Economist give me the idea what I would like to know next. These topics are interesting. I will survey further.

3.11.2011 The Great East Japan Earthquake.

Today is very very important day for Japanese.

2 years ago, the huge earthquake hit Japan. The magnitude was M9.0, which is the largest in recorded history of Japan. The following big shaking, terrible Tsunami had swallowed the East Japan. The reactor in Fukushima became out of control. 18549 people died or disappeared (2013/3/11).

Today, all Japanese did pray for victims. (We have the difference in time though.)

This earthquake had predicted actually. The measures of the highest possible level had been taken against Tsunami, the near shore breakwater was largest one in the history, and the reactor also had the backup system. However, the magnitude of Tsunami was far more terrible than we had expected.

When earthquake came, I was in Tukuba. I was a Ph.D student who was working for development the spectrometer at J-PARC (Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex), J-PARC had been hit hard. I thought how it was difficult to build this large facility again. At that time, I had to admit the power far beyond that the human beings have.

But at the same time, I realized what Japanese had done.

2 years past, J-PARC is now operating at almost same level. This is surprising. As for economy, the closing price of the Nikkei Stock Average on Mar. 11.2013 reached 1.2 times levels not seen since before the Great East Japan Earthquake. We have still a lot of problems though, now we are almost back to the normal state.

Here, what I concerned the most is, Japanese takes care only of ourselves. We tend to shut our eyes from the problem the world is facing. We don’t have any excuse for not fighting together against the problem what the world have faced anymore.

The crises have existed in Japan so that we can improve ourselves. And we will never never forget the kindness from people all over the world.

As a Japanese, I am always concerning about Japan, thinking of how to contribute to Japan, thinking of how to contribute to the world as a Japanese. We Japanese have responsibility for the future of Asia and the world.

And to Japanese, let’s discuss what we can do for the world now. We should be ready for making the world a better place.

The memory and sleep.

This is from Economist article : Memory, Remenber, remenber.

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21571121-new-understanding-emerging-memory-and-forgetfulness-remember-remember

The recent development of study of brain is fascinating. This article is about new understanding of memory and forgetfulness.

The memory is an evolved structure with a job to do. The job is to preserve its owner and help him or her reproduce. Perfection is not required, only adequacy.

Selective forgetting of useless and selective remembering of useful, both are important. Much of this selecting takes place during sleep, there are two paper in ‘Nature Neuroscience’.

1. Robert Stickgold of Harvard University and Matthew Walker of University of California, Berkeley.

They proposed that the process of sleep acts as a form of triage, first choosing what to retain, and then selecting how it will be retained. And they founded sleep does help people discard information they have been told to forget. The more frequently someone experiences waves of brain activity known as sleep spindles, the more his brain scraps items that it is supposed to.Rather than forget passively, then, the brain seems to shed memories actively!! Sleep also helps guide memories intended to be retained down particular paths, which means remember as the patterns not the facts.

2. Bryce Mander and Matthew Walker of University of California, Berkeley.

They compared the process in the young and the old, further into the matter of forgetting.18 people in their teens and 20s, and 15 in their 60s and 70s, were taught nonsensical word pairs, tested on immediately, and then tested again after a night’s sleep. The oldsters scored worse than the youngsters in the immediate test, which is not surprise. What was notable was that, after the sleep, oldster’s brains seems to retain even less material than youngsters’. And those who retained the least had slept less deeply.

Points.

1. Our brain selects what information do we need, and then discard the rest during sleep.

2. Sleep helps us remember as the patterns, as oppose to the facts.

3. The older are worse at immediate memory test, in addition to this, the older are worse after night sleep.

4. Bad sleep helps poor memory.

It may be that the inability to form new memories is not a bug, but a feature. However I would say.

Live the present, study today, tomorrow is too late!!

Beyond Counting Sheep.

Math is the hot new bedtime reading.

This is from article, ’’Beyoud Counting Sheep’’ Time / The Culture / Education

Laura Bilideau Overdeck, a Princeton trained astrophysicist. She is founder of the nonprofit Bedtime Math, and she wanted kids to fall in love with numbers. As a part of that mission she wants to change the way parents put their kids to bed.

The core of Bed time Math is simple. You will ask children to solve the problem on bed, which is from a free diary problem, geared to one of three level of math problem. The subjects tend to be ones that especially appeal to children.

1. Weeones – prekindergarten

2. Little kids – kindergarten and second grade or so

3. Big kids – second grade and up

For example (from text)

1. Weeones- Alaska was the 49^th state to join the U.S. How many states has already joined?

2. Little kids – Of the 20 tallest mountains in the U.S., 17 are in Alaska. How many of them aren’t’ in Alaska? BONUS: There are 200,000 moose are 900,000 caribou in Alaska. How many more caribou than moose are there?

3. Big kids – Alaska covers 660,000 square miles If Alaska cut itself in half, how much bigger than Texa’s 268,000 square miles would each half be?

Bedtime Math is part of project that a lot of people are working on, which is aiming at cultural shift that will get kids coming into school already comfortable with math.

I believe that Bedtime reading is also important. But keep in mind, research shows that early math skills are better predictor of academic success than reading ability. Why don’t you using math problem, instead of just counting Sheep?

One mother who use Bedtime Math says when her child’s zest for Bedtime Math enables her to use it as a threat; “If you don’t brush your teeth now, no math tonight”

You can get the daily math problem by email!

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