Adventuring into Complexity by Exploring Data: From Complicity to Sustainability

Problems of sustainability are typically represented by major present-day challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental and social injustice. Framed this way, sustainable lives and societies depend on finding solutions to each problem. From another perspective, there is only one problem behind them all, stated by Gregory Bateson as: “…the difference between how nature works and the way people think,” and complexity provides a way to define and approach this problem. I extend Edgar Morin’s conceptions of restricted and general complexity into pedagogy to address problems of simplicity and reductionist teaching. The proposed pedagogy is based on long experience teaching a data-oriented course in which I engage geoscience majors in exploring data rather than in finding answers. They use data tools that emphasize visual understandings over quantitative models and the value of multiple possibilities over a single certainty. The tools, teaching and assessments bring complicity, the entanglement of the nominally objective with the subjective, to the fore so that students develop understandings of the phantom objectivity that characterizes “the way people think.” I suggest that complexity-oriented learning based on data exploration can be adapted to other disciplines and even used in non-academic areas since information in the modern world is strongly reliant on quantitative data

Adventuring into Complexity by Exploring Data: From Complicity to Sustainability

Problems of sustainability are typically represented by major present-day challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental and social injustice. Framed this way, sustainable lives and societies depend on finding solutions to each problem. From another perspective, there is only one problem behind them all, stated by Gregory Bateson as: “…the difference between how nature works and the way people think,” and complexity provides a way to define and approach this problem. I extend Edgar Morin’s conceptions of restricted and general complexity into pedagogy to address problems of simplicity and reductionist teaching. The proposed pedagogy is based on long experience teaching a data-oriented course in which I engage geoscience majors in exploring data rather than in finding answers. They use data tools that emphasize visual understandings over quantitative models and the value of multiple possibilities over a single certainty. The tools, teaching and assessments bring complicity, the entanglement of the nominally objective with the subjective, to the fore so that students develop understandings of the phantom objectivity that characterizes “the way people think.” I suggest that complexity-oriented learning based on data exploration can be adapted to other disciplines and even used in non-academic areas since information in the modern world is strongly reliant on quantitative data

Investments in the human capital of the socially disadvantaged children: Effects on redistribution

Recently, early investments in the human capital of children from socially disadvantaged environments have attracted a great deal of attention. Programs of such early intervention, aiming at children's health and well-being, are spreading considerably in the U.S. and are currently tested in several European countries. In a discrete version of the Mirrlees model with a parents' and a children's generation we show the intra-generational and the inter-generational redistributional consequences of such intervention programs. It turns out that the parents' generation always loses when such intervention programs are implemented. Among the children's generation it is the rich who always benefit. Despite the expectation that early intervention puts the poor descendants in a better position, our analysis reveals that the poor among the children's generation may even be worse off if the effect of early intervention on their productivity is not large enough. --Early Intervention,welfare,redistribution,taxation

An Improved Method For Determining and Characterizing Alignments of Point-Like Features and Its Implications For the Pinacate Volcanic Field, Sonora, Mexico

We present an improved method for determining statistically significant alignments of pointlike features. One of the principal such methods now in use, the two-point azimuth method, depends on a homogeneous distribution of points over the region of interest. Modification of this approach by use of the relatively new statistical technique of kernel density estimation permits treatment of heterogeneous point distributions without introducing substantial dependence on choice of the grid employed in the test for significance of apparent preferred orientations. The improved method can selectively reveal alignments on different spatial scales and can suggest the locations of alignments as well as their orientation. We use this method to analyze the spatial distribution of 416 vents, largely of Pleistocene age, in the Pinacate volcanic field, Sonora, Mexico, just east of the northern end of the Gulf of California. Apart from a few sets of aligned cinder cones, the distribution of Pinacate vents appears nearly random on aerial and space photography. However, when treated statistically, old Pinacate vents exhibit structural control trending approximately N10 degrees E throughout the field and in all its subareas. In contrast, vents with ages estimated by comparison with dated cones to be younger than about 0.4 Ma show not only the N10 degrees E control but also N20 degrees W and N55 degrees W alignments significant at the 95% confidence level. The N10 degrees E alignment probably reflects the current Basin and Range horizontal stress regime in this particular area, which is atop the mantle magma source of the Pinacate lavas. The N55 degrees W direction is related to a major regional fracture of that orientation passing through the middle of the field and possibly related to normal faults associated with opening of the adjacent Gulf of California. The distribution of vents relative to the fracture trace is consistent with magma having been guided upward along a SW dipping fault plane. The origin of the N20 degrees W alignment is unknown but of pre-Pleistocene heritage. We found no evidence to support control of the Pinacate vent alignments parallel to rifting or transform directions in the adjacent Gulf. Intrusion along N20 degrees W and N55 degrees W fractures at or since about 0.4 m.y. ago could reflect either a shift in the crustal stress field or an increase in magma pressure in Pinacate conduits that allowed magma to ascend along structures that were not parallel to the maximum horizontal compressive stress

Role of Pantothenic Acid as a Modifier of Body Composition in Pigs

Pigs were fed one of four dietary additions of pantothenic acid (PA, 0, 30, 60, and 120 ppm) to determine the effect of PA additions on growth, body composition, and meat quality of pigs fed from 10 to 115 kg of body weight (BW). Fifteen sets (7 barrows, 8 gilts) of four littermate pigs from a high lean strain were used. Pigs were individually penned and reared via SEW scheme. Pigs were self-fed a diet containing 19 ppm PA from weaning to 10 kg BW. Pigs were then fed a 6 ppm PA basal diet and allotted within litter to one of four dietary additions of PA from d-calcium pantothenate. As dietary PA concentration increased, longissimus muscle area increased quadratically (43.9, 48.0, 45.4, 47.5 cm2, P = .06) and 10th rib backfat decreased quadratically (2.25, 2.04, 2.07, 1.95 cm, P \u3c .05) resulting in a quadratic increase in fat-free lean (51.4, 53.4, 52.5, 53.6%, P \u3c .04). Daily body weight gain (933, 916, 940, 914 g) and feed:gain (2.34, 2.32, 2.34, 2.33 kg/kg) were not altered by dietary PA. In addition, measures of meat (longissimus) quality, including intramuscular fat content (4.4, 4.2, 4.6, 4.0%), Hunter L (54.5, 54.2, 54.3, 54.3), and Hunter a (8.7, 9.1, 8.9, 8.5) color values and water loss under retail storage (4.7, 4.9, 5.1, 4.7%) at 96 hours post-kill were not (P \u3e .10) altered by dietary PA. Based on these data, dietary pantothenic acid at concentrations greater than that required to maximize body weight gain elicits reductions in subcutaneous fat thickness while increasing carcass lean content of market weight pigs without altering meat quality

Dietary Riboflavin Needs for Body Maintenance and Body Protein and Fat Accretion in Pigs

The dietary bioavailable riboflavin needs for body maintenance and body protein and fat accretion were estimated in pigs. The riboflavin required to support body protein accretion was higher than that for body maintenance or fat accretion. Specifically, the riboflavin required to support protein accretion was six times higher than the riboflavin required to support fat accretion. Based on these data, both biological and environmental factors that alter body protein accretion in pigs will substantially alter riboflavin needs. In addition, the dietary bioavailable riboflavin required by high-lean, high-health pigs is greater than the current NRC (4) estimate