1010G【fish】COMMENTS

梦想在路上UID: 2812986

24-1
The state and the economy
Re-enter the dragon
Two books ask how far China’s model of “state capitalism” will spread
Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition

IN MAY 2009 the Chinese consulate【领事馆】 in New York invited Ian Bremmer to take part in a small seminar on “the current financial crisis”. The diplomat who organised the event was the very embodiment【体现，化身】 of the new China—sporting a well-tailored suit and speaking only lightly accented English—and he began the discussion with a bold question: “Now that the free market has failed, what do you think is the proper role for the state in the economy?”
Twenty years ago the state was on the defensive across most of the world. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan had smashed【打碎】 the post-war consensus. Soviet Communism had collapsed. And the World Bank and the IMF were preaching the “Washington consensus” of privatisation and liberalisation.

China was the most conspicuous standout against this trend. The Communist Party greeted the global revolution by adopting what it termed【叫做】 the “bamboo policy”—bending with the wind rather than standing straight and eventually snapping. The party bent with the wind by abandoning central planning. But it only embraced capitalism in so far as it could be used as an instrument of state power.

China has been transformed from a standout into a global model. The recent financial crisis was clearly a turning-point. The Chinese relished【欣赏】 the fact that the Americans had been forced to prop up【支持，资助】 not just their banks but also industrial companies such as General Motors.

Even before the crisis the Chinese felt that history was moving in their direction. Russia’s experiment with laissez-faire had proved to be a debacle【崩溃】. Financial problems had emerged with sickening regularity【讨厌的规律性】. And throughout this turmoil China had succeeded in combining an astonishing rate of growth with social stability. Now it is using its $2.3 trillion【万亿】 in foreign reserves to help prop up America’s profligacy【放荡，肆意浪费】.

From Latin America to the Middle East authoritarian【专制的】 governments are imitating【模仿】
China’s model of “state capitalism”. They are not only using state companies to shore up【支撑住】
their power at home, they are directing those companies to reap the fruits of【收获果实】
global capitalism. State-controlled manufacturers sell goods on the global market and buy up【全部买下】 natural resources. Sovereign-wealth funds invest the profits from all of this activity in global markets.

The rise of this new hybrid【杂种】 has led to a dramatic change in the balance of power between the state and the market. State oil companies control three-quarters of the world’s crude oil reserves. Three of the four largest banks by market capitalisation are state-controlled. The biggest mobile- phone operator, China Mobile, is also a state company. A nice example of the changing balance of power occurred in the same month that Mr Bremmer attended his seminar in New York: America’s largest bank, the Bank of America, was forced to sell its 9% stake in the Construction Bank of China just to stay afloat【幸存】.

Two books focus on this fascinating subject. Mr Bremmer’s is the better read; he provides a wide-ranging【广泛的】 account of the rise of state capitalism and he litters his prose with apposite【合适的】 examples and acute insights. Nobody with a serious interest in the current dilemma should pass it by. “The Beijing Consensus” by Stefan Halper, an American academic at Cambridge University, is narrower. He seems to have spent too much time chewing the fat with 【闲谈】his fellow policy intellectuals and not enough getting his boots dirty.

But he does provide a valuable supplement to Mr Bremmer’s book. Mr Halper supplies chapter and verse on the way the Chinese are spreading their influence across much of the developing world, by coughing up【交出，勉强说出】 no-strings-attached【无附加条件的】
loans, for example, rather than trying to meddle in 【干预】other countries’ internal affairs in the manner of【照…的式样】 the World Bank and the IMF. He also serves up by far the best anecdote about the real workings of state capitalism. In the same month that Mr Bremmer was attending his seminar the Chinese Communist Party ordered local officials in Hubei province to smoke nearly a quarter of a million packs of Hubei-branded cigarettes in order to boost the local economy and stave off【避开】 lay-offs. Official cigarette monitors roamed the province making sure that people hit their cigarette targets and fining those who dared to smoke other brands.

How serious a threat does state capitalism pose to the market model of capitalism? Messrs Bremmer and Halper are actually less bullish【乐观的】 about the new authoritarianism than the titles of their books might suggest. Mr Bremmer, the president of the Eurasia Group, a political-risk consultancy, points out that state capitalism’s fate
is bound up with【与关系密切的】
the fortunes of some very unpleasant political cliques【派系】, such as the Saudi royal family and the Russian oligarchy. Mr Halper demonstrates that China is casting its lot with a number of nasty regimes【政体】. Both authors might also have made more of the fact that there is a lot of evidence to suggest that state companies are less productive and innovative than their private-sector【私营成分】 competitors. Much of the dynamism【活力】 of the Chinese economy comes from private companies rather than bloated【膨胀的】 state firms. There are good reasons for thinking that state capitalism will eventually collapse as a result of what Marxists used to call its internal contradictions【内部矛盾】. But at the moment it looks as if eventually may be some way off【有很大差距，错得厉害】

谦行天下UID: 2797557

25-2

June 6, 2010, 5:15 pm
Should This Be the Last Generation?
By PETER SINGER

Have you ever thought about whether to have a child? If so, what factors entered into your decision? Was it whether having children would be good for you, your partner and others close to the possible child, such as children you may already have, or perhaps your parents? For most people contemplating reproduction, those are the dominant questions. Some may also think about the desirability of adding to the strain that the nearly seven billion people already here are putting on our planet’s environment. But very few ask whether coming into existence is a good thing for the child itself. Most of those who consider that question probably do so because they have some reason to fear that the child’s life would be especially difficult — for example, if they have a family history of a devastating illness, physical or mental, that cannot yet be detected prenatally.
contemplate：think intently and at length, as for spiritual purposes
prenatal：
产前的，婴儿出生前的


胎儿期的，孕期的


All this suggests that we think it is wrong to bring into the world a child whose prospects for a happy, healthy life are poor, but we don’t usually think the fact that a child is likely to have a happy, healthy life is a reason for bringing the child into existence. This has come to be known among philosophers as “the asymmetry” and it is not easy to justify. But rather than go into the explanations usually proffered — and why they fail — I want to raise a related problem. How good does life have to be, to make it reasonable to bring a child into the world? Is the standard of life experienced by most people in developed nations today good enough to make this decision unproblematic[不成问题], in the absence of specific knowledge that the child will have a severe genetic disease or other problem?

If there were to be no future generations, there would be nothing for us to feel to guilty about. Is there anything wrong with this scenario?
The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer held that even the best life possible for humans is one in which we strive for ends that, once achieved, bring only fleeting satisfaction. New desires then lead us on to further futile struggle and the cycle repeats itself.

Schopenhauer’s pessimism has had few defenders over the past two centuries, but one has recently emerged, in the South African philosopher David Benatar, author of a fine book with an arresting title: “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.” One of Benatar’s arguments trades on something like the asymmetry noted earlier. To bring into existence someone who will suffer is, Benatar argues, to harm that person, but to bring into existence someone who will have a good life is not to benefit him or her. Few of us would think it right to inflict【造成】 severe suffering on an innocent child, even if that were the only way in which we could bring many other children into the world. Yet everyone will suffer to some extent, and if our species continues to reproduce, we can be sure that some future children will suffer severely. Hence continued reproduction will harm some children severely, and benefit none.

Benatar also argues that human lives are, in general, much less good than we think they are. We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that are all most of us can achieve are insufficient to outweigh these prolonged negative states. If we think that this is a tolerable state of affairs it is because we are, in Benatar’s view, victims of the illusion of pollyannaism. This illusion may have evolved because it helped our ancestors survive, but it is an illusion nonetheless. If we could see our lives objectively, we would see that they are not something we should inflict on anyone.

pollyannaism：Pollyanna——
[美国英语]遇事老是过分乐观的人；以主观善良愿望看待事物的人[源出于波特小说中的女主角]


Here is a thought experiment to test our attitudes to this view. Most thoughtful people are extremely concerned about climate change. Some stop eating meat, or flying abroad on vacation, in order to reduce their carbon footprint. But the people who will be most severely harmed by climate change have not yet been conceived. If there were to be no future generations, there would be much less for us to feel to guilty about.

So why don’t we make ourselves the Last Generation on Earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized then no sacrifices would be required — we could party our way into extinction!

Of course, it would be impossible to get agreement on universal sterilization, but just imagine that we could. Then is there anything wrong with this scenario? Even if we take a less pessimistic view of human existence than Benatar, we could still defend it, because it makes us better off — for one thing, we can get rid of all that guilt about what we are doing to future generations — and it doesn’t make anyone worse off, because there won’t be anyone else to be worse off.

Is a world with people in it better than one without? Put aside what we do to other species — that’s a different issue. Let’s assume that the choice is between a world like ours and one with no sentient beings in it at all. And assume, too — here we have to get fictitious, as philosophers often do — that if we choose to bring about the world with no sentient beings at all, everyone will agree to do that. No one’s rights will be violated — at least, not the rights of any existing people. Can non-existent people have a right to come into existence?

I do think it would be wrong to choose the non-sentient universe. In my judgment, for most people, life is worth living. Even if that is not yet the case, I am enough of an optimist to believe that, should humans survive for another century or two, we will learn from our past mistakes and bring about a world in which there is far less suffering than there is now. But justifying that choice forces us to reconsider the deep issues with which I began. Is life worth living? Are the interests of a future child a reason for bringing that child into existence? And is the continuance of our species justifiable in the face of our knowledge that it will certainly bring suffering to innocent future human beings?

azure9UID: 2789030

What the new iPhone probably won't include (but should)
Jun 6th 2010, 21:44 by T.S. | LONDON

AS THE futurologist Paul Saffo likes to observe, most ideas take 20 years to become an overnight success. The basic technology is often worked out, but without someone to champion it, it spreads only slowly. Then, eventually, a big company takes the technology in question and builds it into its products, thus endorsing the idea and giving it scale. Suddenly, it takes off. It seems to be an overnight success, but it has actually taken much longer than that to reach the mainstream.

Over the years Apple has blessed several technologies in this way and brought them to a mass audience: the graphical user interface with the Mac, the digital music player with the iPod, mobile internet-browsing and multi-touch screens with the iPhone, tablet computers with the iPad. In each case there were previous examples of the technology, but Apple showed how it should be done, and it then took off. There's another such technology that has been around for several years and is ready for lift-off; it just needs the endorsement of a big company like Apple to make it happen. The technology in question is "near-field communication" (NFC) chips, which can be used to make contactless payments, among other things.

If you use a contactless card as your office pass or public-transport ticket (prominent examples are Octopus in Hong Kong and Oyster in London) then you'll already be familiar with the basic idea: you hold the card near a reader (I keep my Oyster card inside my wallet) and the ticker barrier opens. There are also contactless credit cards in several markets (though not very many retailers accept them yet), and contactless key fobs, using the same technology, which let you pay for petrol with a swipe. This technology has been slowly spreading for years.

What an NFC chip does, however, is enable a mobile phone to emulate one of these contactless cards. The phone is then able to replace a wallet-full of such cards, and accompanying software on the phone lets you check the balance on your rail pass, for example. This is in fact commonplace in Japan, where thousands of people routinely use their mobile phones as their railway tickets, and renew their tickets right on their phones, using the phone's mobile-internet connection. For a while this was easily the biggest mobile-commerce application on Earth.

All the nuts and bolts have been worked out, in other words. But the technology is still stuck in the starting blocks. The banks were pushing contactless credit cards quite hard in some parts of the world a couple of years ago, but the financial crisis has understandably distracted them. Handset-makers such as Nokia have also produced handsets with NFC support, but if only one or two phones in the line-up support NFC, that's not enough phones to encourage retailers, railway companies and so on to adopt the technology.

If Apple announced that every iPhone would henceforth support NFC, however, then the picture would change overnight. There would be a flood of apps to support the emulation of various contactless cards. Within a few months there would be a critical mass of tech-savvy users willing to adopt the technology, giving retailers, banks and other companies the confidence to pile in. And iPhones are quite expensive handsets, with relatively price-insensitive buyers, so nobody would really notice the small added cost of an NFC chip.

Understandably, given that it makes perfect sense, there have been persistent rumours that Apple might be thinking of putting NFC chips into the next iPhone, which is due to be announced on June 7th. Tellingly, the company has filed a couple of NFC-related patents. But the next-generation iPhones that have escaped into the wild in recent weeks, and have then been taken apart, do not seem to include the technology. Moreover, Apple has approved an iPhone case, made by DeviceFidelity, that includes an NFC chip connected via the dock connector, and which then talks to an app on the phone. I doubt Apple would do that if it were about to announce direct support for the technology itself; but perhaps it's a bluff to divert attention from plans to do just that. On balance, though, I don't expect the new fourth-generation iPhone HD, or whatever it is called, to include NFC. But perhaps the fifth-generation one will?

azure9UID: 2789030

Using Light and Genes to Probe the Brain
Optogenetics emerges as a potent tool to study the brain's inner workings
By Gary Stix   

In 1979 Francis Crick, famed co-discoverer of DNA’s structure, published an article in Scientific American that set out a wish list of techniques needed to fundamentally improve understanding of the way the brain processes information. High on his wish list was a method of gaining control over specific classes of neurons while, he wrote, “leaving the others more or less unaltered.”

Over the past few years Crick’s vision for targeting neurons has begun to materialize thanks to a sophisticated combination of fiber optics and genetic engineering. The advent of what is known as optogenetics has even captured popular attention because of its ability to alter animal behavior—one research group demonstrated how light piped into a mouse’s brain can drive it to turn endlessly in circles. Such feats have inspired much public comment, including a joke made by comedian Jay Leno in 2006 about the prospect for an optogenetically controlled fly pestering George W. Bush.

Controlling a subordinate or a spouse with a souped-up laser pointer may be essential for science-fiction dystopia and late-night humor, but in reality optogenetics has emerged as the most important new technology for providing insight into the numbingly complex circuitry of the mammalian brain. It has already furnished clues as to how neural miswriting underlies neurological and mental disorders, including Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia.

A seminal event that sparked widespread neuroscience interest came in 2005, when Karl Deisseroth and his colleagues at Stanford University and at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics in Frankfurt demonstrated how a virus could be used to deliver a light-sensitive gene called channelrhodopsin-2 into specific sets of mammalian neurons. Once equipped with the gene (taken from pond algae), the neurons fired when exposed to light pulses. A box on Crick’s list could be checked off: this experiment and ones that were soon to follow showed how it would be possible to trigger or extinguish selected neurons, and not their neighbors, in just a few milliseconds, the speed at which they normally fire. Hundreds of laboratories worldwide have since adopted Deisseroth’s technique.

A 38-year-old psychiatrist by training who still sees patients once a week, Deisseroth entered the field of bioengineering because of his frustration over the inadequate tools available to research and treat mental illness and neurodegenerative disorders. “I have conducted many brain-stimulation treatments in psychiatry that suffered greatly from a lack of precision. You can stimulate certain cells that you want to target, but you also stimulate all of the wrong cells as well,” he says. Instead of just observing the effects from a drug or an implanted electrode, optogenetics brings researchers closer to the fundamental causes of a behavior.

Since 2005 Deisseroth’s laboratory—at times in collaboration with leading neuroscience groups—has assembled a powerful tool kit based on channelrhodopsin-2 and other so-called opsins. By adjusting the opening or closing of channels in cell membranes, opsins can switch neurons on or turn them off. Molecular legerdemain can also manipulate just a subset of one type of neuron or control a circuit between groups of selected neurons in, say, the limbic system and others in the cortex. Deisseroth has also refined methods for delivering the opsin genes, typically by inserting into a virus both opsin genes and DNA to turn on those genes.

To activate the opsins, Deisseroth’s lab has attached laser diodes to tiny fiber-optic cables that reach the brain’s innermost structures. Along with the optical fibers, electrodes are implanted that record when neurons fire. “In the past year what’s happened is that these techniques have gone from being something interesting and useful in limited applications to something generalizable to any cell or question in biology,” Deisseroth says.

Most compelling, however, are experiments that have demonstrated te relevance of optogenetics to both basic science and medicine. At the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago last October, Michael Häusser of University College London reported on an optogenetics experiment that showed how 100 neurons could trigger a memory stored in a much larger ensemble of about 100,000 neurons, suggesting how the technique may be used to understand memory formation.

Last spring Deisseroth’s group published an optogenetics study that helped to elucidate the workings of deep-brain stimulation, which uses electrodes implanted deep in the brain to alleviate the abnormal movements of Parkinson’s disease. The experiment called into question the leading theory of how the technology works—activation of an area called the subthalamic nucleus. Instead the electrodes appear to exert their effects on nerve fibers that reach the subthalamic nucleus from the motor cortex and perhaps other areas. The finding has already led to a better understanding of how to deploy deep-brain electrodes. Given its fine-tuned specificity, optoelectronics might eventually replace deep-brain stimulation.

Although optogenetic control of human behavior may be years away, Deisseroth comments that the longer-range implications of the technology must be considered: “I’m not writing ethics papers, but I think about these issues every day, what it might mean to gain understanding and control over what is a desire, what is a need, what is hope.”

谦行天下UID: 2797557

26-2

Using Light and Genes to Probe the Brain
Optogenetics【光遗传学】 emerges as a potent tool to study the brain's inner workings
By Gary Stix   

In 1979 Francis Crick, famed co-discoverer of DNA’s structure, published an article in Scientific American that set out a wish list of techniques needed to fundamentally improve understanding of the way the brain processes information. High on his wish list was a method of gaining control over specific classes of neurons while, he wrote, “leaving the others more or less unaltered.”

Over the past few years Crick’s vision for targeting neurons has begun to materialize thanks to a sophisticated combination of fiber optics【纤维光学】 and genetic engineering. The advent of what is known as optogenetics has even captured popular attention because of its ability to alter animal behavior—one research group demonstrated how light piped into a mouse’s brain can drive it to turn endlessly in circles. Such feats have inspired much public comment, including a joke made by comedian Jay Leno in 2006 about the prospect for an optogenetically controlled fly pestering George W. Bush.
The advent of ：(重要人物或事件)…的出现(或到来)

pester：annoy persistently


Controlling a subordinate or a spouse with a souped-up laser pointer may be essential for science-fiction dystopia and late-night humor, but in reality optogenetics has emerged as the most important new technology for providing insight into the numbingly complex circuitry of the mammalian brain. It has already furnished clues as to how neural miswriting underlies neurological and mental disorders, including Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia.
souped-up：加强了马力的—— soup：n汤；马力；v加速马力
dystopia：糟透的社会
A seminal event that sparked widespread neuroscience interest came in 2005, when Karl Deisseroth and his colleagues at Stanford University and at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics in Frankfurt demonstrated how a virus could be used to deliver a light-sensitive gene called channelrhodopsin-2 into specific sets of mammalian neurons. Once equipped with the gene (taken from pond algae), the neurons fired when exposed to light pulses. A box on Crick’s list could be checked off: this experiment and ones that were soon to follow showed how it would be possible to trigger or extinguish selected neurons, and not their neighbors, in just a few milliseconds, the speed at which they normally fire. Hundreds of laboratories worldwide have since adopted Deisseroth’s technique.

A 38-year-old psychiatrist by training who still sees patients once a week, Deisseroth entered the field of bioengineering because of his frustration over the inadequate tools available to research and treat mental illness and neurodegenerative disorders. “I have conducted many brain-stimulation treatments in psychiatry that suffered greatly from a lack of precision. You can stimulate certain cells that you want to target, but you also stimulate all of the wrong cells as well,” he says. Instead of just observing the effects from a drug or an implanted electrode, optogenetics brings researchers closer to the fundamental causes of a behavior.
psychiatrist：精神病学家，精神病医生

Since 2005 Deisseroth’s laboratory—at times in collaboration with leading neuroscience groups—has assembled a powerful tool kit based on channelrhodopsin-2 and other so-called opsins. By adjusting the opening or closing of channels in cell membranes, opsins can switch neurons on or turn them off. Molecular legerdemain can also manipulate just a subset of one type of neuron or control a circuit between groups of selected neurons in, say, the limbic system and others in the cortex. Deisseroth has also refined methods for delivering the opsin genes, typically by inserting into a virus both opsin genes and DNA to turn on those genes.

To activate the opsins, Deisseroth’s lab has attached laser diodes to tiny fiber-optic cables that reach the brain’s innermost structures. Along with the optical fibers, electrodes are implanted that record when neurons fire. “In the past year what’s happened is that these techniques have gone from being something interesting and useful in limited applications to something generalizable to any cell or question in biology,” Deisseroth says.

Most compelling, however, are experiments that have demonstrated te relevance of optogenetics to both basic science and medicine. At the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago last October, Michael Häusser of University College London reported on an optogenetics experiment that showed how 100 neurons could trigger a memory stored in a much larger ensemble of about 100,000 neurons, suggesting how the technique may be used to understand memory formation.

Last spring Deisseroth’s group published an optogenetics study that helped to elucidate the workings of deep-brain stimulation, which uses electrodes implanted deep in the brain to alleviate the abnormal movements of Parkinson’s disease. The experiment called into question the leading theory of how the technology works—activation of an area called the subthalamic【邱下脑】 nucleus. Instead the electrodes appear to exert their effects on nerve fibers that reach the subthalamic nucleus from the motor cortex and perhaps other areas. The finding has already led to a better understanding of how to deploy【配置】 deep-brain electrodes. Given its fine-tuned specificity, optoelectronics might eventually replace deep-brain stimulation.

Although optogenetic control of human behavior may be years away, Deisseroth comments that the longer-range implications of the technology must be considered: “I’m not writing ethics papers, but I think about these issues every day, what it might mean to gain understanding and control over what is a desire, what is a need, what is hope.”

谦行天下UID: 2797557

26-1

What the new iPhone probably won't include (but should)
Jun 6th 2010, 21:44 by T.S. | LONDON

AS THE futurologist Paul Saffo likes to observe, most ideas take 20 years to become an overnight success. The basic technology is often worked out, but without someone to champion【拥护】 it, it spreads only slowly. Then, eventually, a big company takes the technology in question and builds it into its products, thus endorsing【背书】 the idea and giving it scale. Suddenly, it takes off. It seems to be an overnight success, but it has actually taken much longer than that to reach the mainstream.
futurologist ：未来学家科技预测者[亦作futurist]



Over the years Apple has blessed several technologies in this way and brought them to a mass audience: the graphical user interface with the Mac, the digital music player with the iPod, mobile internet-browsing and multi-touch screens with the iPhone, tablet computers with the iPad. In each case there were previous examples of the technology, but Apple showed how it should be done, and it then took off. There's another such technology that has been around for several years and is ready for lift-off【腾空飞起】; it just needs the endorsement of a big company like Apple to make it happen. The technology in question is "near-field communication" (NFC) chips, which can be used to make contactless payments, among other things.

If you use a contactless card as your office pass or public-transport ticket (prominent examples are Octopus in Hong Kong and Oyster in London) then you'll already be familiar with the basic idea: you hold the card near a reader (I keep my Oyster card inside my wallet) and the ticker barrier opens. There are also contactless credit cards in several markets (though not very many retailers accept them yet), and contactless key fobs, using the same technology, which let you pay for petrol with a swipe. This technology has been slowly spreading for years.

What an NFC chip does, however, is enable a mobile phone to emulate one of these contactless cards. The phone is then able to replace a wallet-full of such cards, and accompanying software on the phone lets you check the balance on your rail pass, for example. This is in fact commonplace in Japan, where thousands of people routinely use their mobile phones as their railway tickets, and renew their tickets right on their phones, using the phone's mobile-internet connection. For a while this was easily the biggest mobile-commerce application on Earth.

All the nuts and bolts【基本要素】 have been worked out, in other words. But the technology is still stuck in the starting blocks. The banks were pushing contactless credit cards quite hard in some parts of the world a couple of years ago, but the financial crisis has understandably distracted them. Handset-makers such as Nokia have also produced handsets with NFC support, but if only one or two phones in the line-up support NFC, that's not enough phones to encourage retailers, railway companies and so on to adopt the technology.

If Apple announced that every iPhone would henceforth【从此以后】 support NFC, however, then the picture would change overnight. There would be a flood of apps to support the emulation of various contactless cards. Within a few months there would be a critical mass of tech-savvy users willing to adopt the technology, giving retailers, banks and other companies the confidence to pile in. And iPhones are quite expensive handsets【手机】, with relatively price-insensitive buyers, so nobody would really notice the small added cost of an NFC chip.

Understandably, given that it makes perfect sense, there have been persistent rumours that Apple might be thinking of putting NFC chips into the next iPhone, which is due to be announced on June 7th. Tellingly, the company has filed a couple of NFC-related patents. But the next-generation iPhones that have escaped into the wild in recent weeks, and have then been taken apart, do not seem to include the technology. Moreover, Apple has approved an iPhone case, made by DeviceFidelity, that includes an NFC chip connected via the dock connector, and which then talks to an app on the phone. I doubt Apple would do that if it were about to announce direct support for the technology itself; but perhaps it's a bluff【断臂】 to divert attention from plans to do just that. On balance, though, I don't expect the new fourth-generation iPhone HD, or whatever it is called, to include NFC. But perhaps the fifth-generation one will?

竹雯兰钧UID: 2808439

我也来学习学习

凝羽欲翔UID: 2733350

26-1

What the new iPhone probably won't include (but should) Jun 6th 2010, 21:44 by T.S. | LONDON AS THE futurologist Paul Saffo likes to observe, most ideas take 20 years to become an overnight success. The basic technology is often worked out, but without someone to champion it, it spreads only slowly. Then, eventually, a big company takes the technology in question and builds it into its products, thus endorsing the idea and giving it scale. Suddenly, it takes off. It seems to be an overnight success, but it has actually taken much longer than that to reach the mainstream.（形容所走历程的文字很好） Over the years Apple has blessed several technologies in this way and brought them to a mass audience: the graphical user interface with the Mac, the digital music player with the iPod, mobile internet-browsing and multi-touch screens with the iPhone, tablet computers with the iPad. In each case there were previous examples of the technology, but Apple showed how it should be done, and it then took off（career takes off~~）. There's another such technology that has been around(准备) for several years and is ready for lift-off（离地升空，垂直发射）; it just needs the endorsement of a big company like Apple to make it happen. The technology in question is "near-field communication" (NFC) chips, which can be used to make contactless payments, among other things. If you use a contactless card as your office pass or public-transport ticket (prominent examples are Octopus in Hong Kong and Oyster in London) then you'll already be familiar with the basic idea: you hold the card near a reader (I keep my Oyster card inside my wallet) and the ticker barrier opens. There are also contactless credit cards in several markets (though not very many retailers accept them yet), and contactless key fobs, using the same technology, which let you pay for petrol with a swipe（刷卡，突然）. This technology has been slowly spreading for years. What an NFC chip does, however, is enable a mobile phone to emulate（模仿） one of these contactless cards. The phone is then able to replace a wallet-full of such cards, and accompanying software on the phone lets you check the balance on your rail pass, for example. This is in fact commonplace in Japan, where thousands of people routinely use their mobile phones as their railway tickets, and renew their tickets right on their phones, using the phone's mobile-internet connection. For a while this was easily the biggest mobile-commerce application on Earth. All the nuts and bolts（核心技术、攻坚部分） have been worked out, in other words. But the technology is still stuck in the starting blocks. The banks were pushing contactless credit cards quite hard in some parts of the world a couple of years ago, but the financial crisis has understandably distracted them. Handset-makers such as Nokia have also produced handsets with NFC support, but if only one or two phones in the line-up（一排人，排成直线的） support NFC, that's not enough phones to encourage retailers, railway companies and so on to adopt the technology. If Apple announced that every iPhone would henceforth support NFC, however, then the picture would change overnight. There would be a flood of apps（应用程序） to support the emulation（竞争） of various contactless cards. Within a few months there would be a critical mass of tech-savvy users willing to adopt the technology, giving retailers, banks and other companies the confidence to pile in. And iPhones are quite expensive handsets, with relatively price-insensitive buyers, so nobody would really notice the small added cost of an NFC chip. Understandably, given that it makes perfect sense, there have been persistent rumours that Apple might be thinking of putting NFC chips into the next iPhone, which is due to be announced on June 7th. Tellingly（显著的，有效的）, the company has filed a couple of NFC-related patents. But the next-generation iPhones that have escaped into the wild（公开销售） in recent weeks, and have then been taken apart, do not seem to include the technology. Moreover, Apple has approved an iPhone case, made by DeviceFidelity, that includes an NFC chip connected via the dock connector, and which then talks to an app on the phone. I doubt Apple would do that if it were about to announce direct support for the technology itself; but perhaps it's a bluff（悬崖，吓唬，愚弄） to divert attention from plans to do just that. On balance, though, I don't expect the new fourth-generation iPhone HD, or whatever it is called, to include NFC. But perhaps the fifth-generation one will?

franceneUID: 2818958

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Green-energy blues
Investors wonder if the renewable-energy boom is over
Jun 1st 2010


IF ANY industry ought to be seeing silver iridescence in the dark slick of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, it is renewable energy. However, since what is perhaps the biggest environmental disaster America has yet seen erupted at BP’s Macondo prospect on April 20th the RENIXX index, which measures the world’s 30 largest publicly traded renewable-energy companies, has fallen by 15%. This is even worse than the 12% fall in the MSCI world stockmarkets index in that period. Moreover, it continues a longer-term decline of more than two-thirds from the index’s all-time high in December 2007.

The oil spill might have been expected to revive a sense of urgency that the world, and America in particular, should reduce its dependence on oil, not least by switching to cleaner, greener sources of energy. Instead it is increasingly common to hear investors asking gloomily, “Is green dead?”

The green-energy industry is still policy-driven rather than market-driven
The economic downturn is clearly partly to blame for the decline in shares of renewable-energy companies. The industry is still policy-driven rather than market-driven, and the recession has increasingly called into question whether governments will be able to afford the sort of environmental policies they have been promising (including in their fiscal-stimulus programmes). These policy commitments had been an important factor in the bulging market capitalisations of green-energy firms two or three years ago. The recent problems in the euro zone have increased such concerns among investors, especially given the big contributions that wobbly countries such as Spain and Italy have been making to total global demand for solar and wind energy.

Add to that the failure at the Copenhagen summit to make any significant progress in reaching a global agreement to curb climate change. Add, too, the similar lack of progress in getting an energy bill adopted by America's Congress. Taking these failures together with the sharp fall in the price of carbon on Chicago’s voluntary emission-permits market, it is easy to conclude that the Cassandras of early 2008 who talked about a bubble in green investing have been proved right.

Yet a case can be made—and the industry’s optimists are making it—that the green gloom is overdone. “The stockmarket is focused on the macroeconomic environment, not on the fundamentals,” argues Tom Werner, the chief executive of SunPower, a big American solar-energy firm. Although SunPower’s share price is currently around one-tenth what it was at its peak in December 2007, Mr Werner insists that green is anything but dead. “The secular move to renewables such as solar is an unassailable shift,” he says. A glut of solar panels is expected to hit the market in the coming year as new production comes online, especially in China. Even so, Mr Werner remains confident that his firm is “extremely well-positioned” to profit from that shift.

The outlook for greenery looks a lot better outside the wind and solar firms that dominate the RENIXX index
Moreover, the outlook for greenery looks a lot better outside the wind and solar firms that dominate the RENIXX index. “Investment in wind and solar overheated in the run-up to the economic crisis, and it is still suffering. But other sorts of ‘clean tech’ investment are bouncing back,” says Dan Esty of Yale University, the co-author of “Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value and Build Competitive Advantage”. Investment in clean-tech from various sources, including venture capital, private equity and corporate research and development, peaked at around $200 billion in 2008, before dropping by 20-30% last year, estimates Mr Esty. But it is reviving this year, and may soon exceed the 2008 total—if not in 2010, it will certainly do so in 2011, he predicts.

In renewable energy, geothermal and cellulosic biofuels are attracting lots of new money, says Mr Esty, as are various forms of supporting infrastructure, including “smart grid” and “smart home” technology, better batteries and other energy-storage equipment. The electric-car business is booming, with a number of new models soon to arrive on America’s roads.

China is also investing heavily in electric cars: could America lose the green-tech game?
However, Chinese firms are also investing heavily in electric cars. What the Chinese authorities have realised, says Mr Esty, is that even leaving aside their contribution to preventing climate change, electric cars have the potential to solve the country’s huge problem with urban smog. He worries that America is in danger of “losing the innovation game” to China on various green-energy technologies, electric vehicles included.

The danger of losing technological leadership in a crucial industry to a big geopolitical rival; and an oil disaster in its backyard. Surely America’s government cannot ignore the pressing need for new policies to promote its green-energy industries? By marking down the shares of renewables firms, the markets seem to be assuming that the government will indeed ignore it. Then again, as has been all too clear in recent years, the markets do not always guess right.

franceneUID: 2818958

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Cheap perfume and fried chicken
A new show of photographs should help to revive a forgotten name
Jun 17th 2010



AMID the fussy grandeur of the Metropolitan Museum of Art sits an unexpected show of photographs. “Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players” is a collection of Leon Levinstein’s black-and-white pictures of New York City from 1950 to 1980. They are raw and energetic, with rubbish-strewn streets, stooped old men, fat painted ladies and posturing youths in tight jeans. One photograph features a woman in a white party dress curled up on the beach, asleep and mysterious. Another sees two handball players snapped from behind, aloft and balletic.

These 44 images chronicle life as it is lived in the city: kinetic and rough, with little beauty but plenty of pride. Levinstein, who died in 1988, often shot his subjects up close and at odd angles. The result is often unflattering but affectionate, full of the small pleasures of the day-to-day. The gallery seems fragrant with cigarette smoke, cheap perfume and fried chicken.

Levinstein is a photographer’s photographer. Beyond a core of devotees, his name rings few bells. He earned attention in the 1950s when Edward Steichen, as head of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art, included him in a few shows alongside such peers as Diane Arbus and Robert Frank. But then he fell off the map.

This could be because he stuck to a career in advertising, taking photographs (thousands in all, over several decades) only in his spare time. Or maybe it was because he was an unpretentious loner. He gruffly complained that being a street photographer meant that “you’re always on the outside”. Yet he seemed unwilling to have it any other way.

The photographs are now part of the Met’s permanent collection, thanks to a big recent gift from a collector named Gary Davis. Jeff Rosenheim, the show’s curator, hopes this new trove, which is on show until October 17th, will revive Levinstein’s place among 20th-century photographers. The man himself may not have cared for such attention, but his work demands it.

谦行天下UID: 2797557

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