NPR on Television, Prisons, & the Digital TV Conversion

NPR did this story back in December that was noteworthy for the discussion of the use of TV to control prisoners. Prisoners have committees in one prison that decides the schedules of shows each week. A soap opera is one of the few programs that every prisoner wants to see. Marcuse would have to smile.

Prisons Excluded From DTV Coupon Programs
by Catherine Welch
All Things Considered, December 30, 2008
"Many cash-strapped prisons rely on analog television sets to keep prisoners occupied."

Humans driving rapid change in hunted/harvested species

In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this month it was reported that a review of studies of species used by humans for food showed rapid changes in these species size and growth rates. The study shows:
"that average phenotypic changes in 40 human-harvested systems are much more rapid than changes reported in studies examining not only natural (n = 20 systems) but also other human-driven (n = 25 systems) perturbations in the wild, outpacing them by >300% and 50%, respectively. Accordingly, harvested organisms show some of the most abrupt trait changes ever observed in wild populations, providing a new appreciation for how fast phenotypes are capable of changing. These changes, which include average declines of almost 20% in size-related traits and shifts in life history traits of nearly 25%, are most rapid in commercially exploited systems and, thus, have profound conservation and economic implications."

Human predators outpace other agents of trait change in the wild
by Chris T. Darimont, Stephanie M. Carlsonc, Michael T. Kinnisond, Paul C. Paquete, Thomas E. Reimchena and Christopher C. Wilmers.

One of the best science essays I read last year was this one by Times Blogger Olivia Judson on the possibility of clouds being an unrecognized and unexplored ecological niche. The Wild Side, New York Times An excerpt: "Clouds. It’s been known for ages that microbes — bacteria, algae, fungi, and other tiny organisms — can be found in clouds. This isn’t surprising. Microbes often get airborne. They can be lofted by the wind from the leaves of a plant; or thrown into the air when a bubble of water bursts, and then lofted by the wind. They get high. They’ve been captured in the mesosphere — that’s the layer of atmosphere above the stratosphere — as much as 70 kilometers (more than 40 miles) above the Earth’s surface. And microbes regularly travel long distances by wind. Indeed, in 1832, Charles Darwin, at sea on the “HMS Beagle,” noticed that dust had landed on the ship; and from the position of the wind and the ship, concluded that it must have come more than 500 kilometers (300 miles) from the coast of Africa. He collected it, and sent it off for analysis; it turned out to contain numerous species of African freshwater algae. Similarly, clouds have been suggested to be a way that microbes get around the planet — a sort of bus system for bacteria. But the paper in “Geophysical Research Letters” went further. It claimed not just that microbes are traveling via cloud, but that some of them are actually living there — growing, metabolizing, reproducing — until plummeting back to earth when the cloud rains."

Melvyn Bragg In Our Time series: Darwin January 2009

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, Melvyn Bragg presents a series about Darwin's life and work.
Darwin: In Our Time site and schedule of programs.