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【2010-8-22】狗狗提高办公室效率

Animal and human behaviour

Manager's best friend

Dogs improve office productivity

Aug 12th 2010

THERE are plenty of studies which show that dogs act as social catalysts, helping their owners forge intimate, long-term relationships with other people. But does that apply in the workplace? Christopher Honts and his colleagues at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant were surprised to find that there was not much research on this question, and decided to put that right. They wondered in particular if the mere presence of a canine in the office might make people collaborate more effectively. And, as they told a meeting of the International Society for Human Ethology in Madison, Wisconsin, on August 2nd, they found that it could.

To reach this conclusion, they carried out two experiments. In the first, they brought together 12 groups of four individuals and told each group to come up with a 15-second advertisement for a made-up product. Everyone was asked to contribute ideas for the ad, but ultimately the group had to decide on only one. Anyone familiar with the modern “collaborative” office environment will know that that is a challenge.

Some of the groups had a dog underfoot throughout, while the others had none. After the task, all the volunteers had to answer a questionnaire on how they felt about working with the other—human—members of the team. Mr Honts found that those who had had a dog to slobber and pounce on them ranked their team-mates more highly on measures of trust, team cohesion and intimacy than those who had not.

In the other experiment, which used 13 groups, the researchers explored how the presence of an animal altered players’ behaviour in a game known as the prisoner’s dilemma. In the version of this game played by the volunteers, all four members of each group had been “charged” with a crime. Individually, they could choose (without being able to talk to the others) either to snitch on their team-mates or to stand by them. Each individual’s decision affected the outcomes for the other three as well as for himself in a way that was explained in advance. The lightest putative sentence would be given to someone who chose to snitch while the other three did not; the heaviest penalty would be borne by a lone non-snitch. The second-best outcome came when all four decided not to snitch. And so on.

Having a dog around made volunteers 30% less likely to snitch than those who played without one. The moral, then: more dogs in offices and fewer in police stations.

Science and Technology

http://www.economist.com/node/16789216

抵制墨迹的老人UID：2878220

Currencies Race to the bottom
A weak economy and an active Federal Reserve have driven the dollar down since June. Will that last?
Aug 12th 2010



THREE months ago, when Europe’s debt crisis had markets panicking about sovereign risk, it seemed that all roads led to the dollar. The greenback was rising against the other big global currencies, the yen, pound and euro. Its role as the world’s reserve currency seemed an inestimable advantage when investors were unsure where they could safely park their cash. Within the rich world, America’s economy looked the best of a bad bunch. The stage seemed set for a dollar rally.


How quickly things have changed. On August 11th the dollar fell to a 15-year low against the yen of ¥84.7. It perked up against the euro to $1.29, though that was still much weaker than the $1.19 it reached in early June when euro-revulsion was at its worst (see chart 1). The ground the greenback has lost in recent weeks owes to a run of weaker data about the economy, not least on jobs (see box on the next page). On August 10th the Federal Reserve conceded that the recovery would probably be slower than it had hoped. The Fed kept its main interest rate in a target range of 0-0.25% and stuck to its creed that rates would need to stay low for “an extended period”. In addition the central bank said that it would reinvest the proceeds from the maturing mortgage bonds（抵押债券）it owns into government bonds to prevent its balance-sheet (and thus the stock of ready cash) from gradually shrinking.
  

This modest change in Fed policy was widely expected. It signalled concern about the economy while stopping short of panic measures. That did not stop stockmarkets from slumping the day after the Fed’s statement—perhaps because investors had hoped the central bank would go further and commit itself to a fresh round of asset purchases, or perhaps because they were unnerved by the Fed’s more cautious tone on the economy. But the Fed’s shift still seemed to confirm that it is more minded than other central banks to keep its monetary policy loose, a perception that has contributed to the dollar’s slide and helped America’s exporters. The day before the Fed’s decision, the Bank of Japan kept its monetary policy unchanged. The European Central Bank (ECB) has allowed short-term market interest rates to rise as it withdraws emergency liquidity support from the banking system.

Events in America do not determine the dollar’s fate: exchange rates have two sides. The euro has bounced back since June in part because markets are more confident that Europe has got to grips with its sovereign-debt problems. The currency’s strength also reflects a stronger economy. Figures due out after The Economist went to press were expected to show that the euro area’s GDP grew a bit faster than America’s in the second quarter, thanks largely to booming Germany. But the problem of sluggish growth in the euro zone’s periphery has not gone away. A strong euro amplifies the lack of export competitiveness in Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal. That is one reason why many analysts think the euro is likely to weaken again.


The yen’s rally, in contrast, may have further to run. It is trading against the dollar at levels last seen in the aftermath of the peso crisis in the mid-1990s, when the yen had greater claim to being a haven from troubles elsewhere. But the yen’s renewed strength may not be quite as painful for Japan’s exporters as that implies. Years of falling prices in Japan combined with modest inflation elsewhere mean the real effective exchange rate is below its average since 1990 (see chart 2). Because Japan’s wages and prices have fallen relative to those in America and Europe, its exporters can live with a stronger nominal exchange rate.(名义汇率,是一种衡量两种货币相对价格的货币概念)


What needs explaining, then, is not why the yen has strengthened recently but why it was so weak before. Kit Juckes of Société Générale reckons that the low yields on offer in Japan provide most of the answer. “The yen is under-owned because Japan had by far the lowest interest rates in the world,” he says. But now falling bond yields in America, as well as in most of Europe, have made Japan a less unattractive place for investors to put their money. The more that the rest of the rich world resembles Japan, the less reason there is to shun the yen. There are even stories that China has been buying Japanese bonds as part of its effort to diversify its currency reserves away from the dollar.

Such interest may not be entirely welcome in Japan. A cheap currency is especially prized now, when aggregate demand in the rich world is so scarce and exports to emerging markets seem the best hope of economic salvation. Japan’s finance minister has complained that the yen’s recent moves are “somewhat one-sided”. That kind of talk has spurred speculation that Japan’s authorities may soon intervene to contain the yen’s rise. But such action would spoil the rich world’s efforts to persuade China to let its currency appreciate. It is perhaps more likely that the Bank of Japan and the ECB(欧洲中央银行) will follow the Fed’s lead in extending (albeit modestly) its quantitative easing（量化宽松：美国前小布殊政府就是想通过不断减息来解决企业借贷的困难；现政府联储局又采取「量化宽松」即印银纸来买国债、托国债，使国债不跌反升、利率不升反跌，以引诱他国购买美债，选择美元投资和避难。）   —or risk a rising exchange rate.

The battle for a cheap currency may eventually cause transatlantic (and transpacific) tension: not everyone can push down their exchange rates at once. For now, though, the dollar holds the cheap-money prize.

Finance and Economics    http://www.economist.com/node/16792926


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抵制墨迹的老人UID：2878220

海洋污染
Ocean pollution
[size=2.2em]Good news for turtles?
The amount of plastic floating in the Atlantic does not seem to be increasing
[size=1.1em]Aug 23rd 2010
[size=1.3em]THE Pacific gyre is a well-known graveyard for plastic. That ocean’s currents conspire to sweep flotsam into an area south of Hawaii variously described as being from the size of Texas to the size of the United States. Its Atlantic equivalent is less well known, but the currents conspire here, too, to create a zone south of Bermuda（百幕大群岛） into which the detritus discarded by North Americans tends to spiral. In both cases this is bad news for sea creatures, and pictures of choked dolphins and strangled turtles are regularly used to wring the withers of uncaring consumers in the hope that they might use less packaging.

[size=1.3em]The amount of plastic produced around the world increased fivefold between 1976 and 2008, and the amount thrown away by Americans went up fourfold between 1980 and 2008. It is a reasonable assumption that, as the amount of discarded plastic increases, so will the problem of oceanic pollution. Reasonable but, as it turns out, wrong. For a 22-year-long study of the North Atlantic and the Caribbean, just published in Science, suggests things are not getting worse. Kara（喀拉海——北冰洋边海，在苏联新地岛和北地群岛之间） Law from the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and her colleagues have found that between 1986 and 2008 there was no increase in the concentration of plastic in the areas they looked at.

[size=1.3em]Their study drew on the work of 7,000 undergraduate students and scientists who took part in 6,100 tows across the ocean surface with plankton nets. They collected 64,000 pieces of plastic, all of which were picked by hand from the nets and recorded. As the map shows, plastic tends not to accumulate near the land (from which, presumably, it has been cast) but, rather, gathers offshore. The Sargasso Sea（马尾藻海——在西印度群岛东北）, where floating seaweed accumulates and legend has it that ships thus founder, is also a result of this phenomenon. As the graph shows, though, the amount of floating plastic shows no upward trend.

Related items

• The future of the sea: Fish foodJul 22nd 2010
• Biotechnology: Chemistry goes greenJul 1st 2010
• Geoengineering: We all want to change the worldMar 31st 2010

[size=1.3em]Dr Law and her colleagues have no explanation for this lack of accumulation. A programme by the American plastics industry, begun in 1991, to recapture the spilled resin pellets that are the basic material of the industry, and to prevent their spillage in the first place, has resulted in a decrease in the number of pellets in the water. That alone, however, is insufficient to explain the data. Nor does the missing plastic seem to have sunk. Trawls at depth show no sign of it. The Sargasso Sea of legend, and its modern equivalent, the Bermuda Triangle（百慕达神秘三角——百慕大、波多黎各和美国佛罗里达州所形成的三角地带，许多船只，飞机曾在此神秘失踪，乃得此名）, are supposed to be places where things disappear without trace. Dr Law seems to have come up with a real example.

原文链接：http://www.economist.com/node/16877258

抵制墨迹的老人UID：2878220

Wind energy and politics
Not on my beach, please
Across the world, wind technology produces as much political heat as electric light—stirring local arguments as well as global ones Aug 19th 2010 | Athens, Hyannis and sydney
Flour, not power
“OF COURSE I’m all in favour of clean energy, especially wind power, but…” That is a familiar opening gambit话题、开场白 in a new sort of political storm, raging ever more fiercely in corners of the world where electric power comes, or may soon come, from flashing blades rather than blazing furnaces.
The odd thing about conflicts over wind is that, usually, each side claims to be greener than the other. Opponents say a unique landscape or seascape is being overshadowed, to the detriment of（对……不利） tourists and residents alike. Wind power does undoubtedly pose some hazard to birds and other fauna动物群; some say it harms humans. Others simply find wind turbines（风里涡轮机） ugly, an eyesore眼中钉 in any location. Yet, compared with other power sources, the green credentials证书、文凭 of wind are pretty convincing: it creates no waste, uses no water and (unlike solar panels太阳能电池板) doesn’t need much room.
As an example of a green-on-green row, take one in Maine, where environmentalists squabble over plans to expand a wind farm on the wilderness of Kibby Mountain. Opponents say the lynx山狸 and other species will be disturbed; they hate the fact that the wind farm’s builders, TransCanada, are also engaged in tar-sands extraction in Alberta. Supporters retort that global warming, which wind and other renewable energies（再生能源） help to avert避免, would not be good for big cats or the trees they prowl round徘徊. On August 5th, TransCanada announced that it was scaling back（相应缩减、按比例缩减） its expansion plan after running into（遭遇到） resistance from state regulators.


Meanwhile in Scotland’s border country, David Bellamy, a broadcaster on wildlife, has joined the campaign against a wind farm in the rugged崎岖的 Lammermuir Hills. This row is not just green-on-green, but blueblood-against-blueblood. The Duke of Roxburghe wants to host the turbines; his neighbour, the Duke of Northumberland, opposes them.
Tempers run extra-high when the locations are glamorous and global celebrities are involved. Take Robert Kennedy junior, an environmental lawyer who helped to clean up New York’s Hudson River. He has been part of a campaign to stop a $1 billion sea-based project, called Cape Wind, that was approved by the Obama administration in April. If it proceeds, it will be America’s first offshore wind park, with an impressive capacity of 468 megawatts百万瓦特. The country has been a leader in land-based turbines but lags behind China and Europe in sea-based efforts. Among its many benefits, the park would meet the electricity needs of a gorgeous strip of coast where Kennedys and other grand folk have been summering for several generations. But it is a blessing those blazer-wearing穿着运动夹克的, bourbon-sipping啜饮着波旁酒的 vacationers could do without.
Ken Salazar, America’s secretary of the interior, said he gave his approval only after making adjustments to parry回避 all objectors. The number of turbines was cut from 170 to 130, in part to reduce the “visual impact（视觉震撼）” suffered by the Kennedys’ fabled compound. The wind park has been moved farther away from Nantucket island and its breadth has been reduced to make it less visible to holidaymakers到外地度假者 there. The minimum distance from the mainland is now 5.2 nautical miles; Nantucket town is 14 miles away from the proposed blades.
But the Kennedys, as well as humbler较低级的 sorts nearby, such as the owners of homes, boats and businesses, have not been persuaded. Before his death in 2009, Senator Ted Kennedy (Robert’s uncle) had denounced the project as a “special-interest giveaway不正当交易”. Scott Brown, the Republican who took his place in the Senate, is following suit; he has likened the park to putting turbines in the Grand Canyon. In some local matters, even right-wing climate sceptics and climate-conscious lefties concur.
On a recent August day in Hyannis, the mood seemed carefree as tourists tucked into（用……盖好） fish lunches or boarded ships for the islands. But in the naysayers’ view, it is precisely these idyllic scenes that are under threat from machines that may cover an area the size of Manhattan and be taller (at 134 metres) than the Statue of Liberty. “It would be like industrialising the Sound,” says Audra Parker, head of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, a protest group.
A study by the Beacon Hill Institute, a free-market think-tank associated with Boston’s Suffolk University, lists a sharp drop（暴跌） in tourist spending among the economic costs the project would impose; it would not be viable at all without a vast subsidy from state and federal taxpayers, the report argues. But Mr Salazar insists that the Cape Wind project is not only desirable in itself, but a precursor to other wind parks on America’s Atlantic coast, which has up to 1m megawatts of capacity.
One place where aesthetes and sceptics怀疑者 seem to have prevailed is the Greek island of Serifos, where plans were announced in 2007 to build 87 turbines of similar height to the ones proposed for Massachusetts. Critics felt the blades would disturb the 100,000 tourists who visit every year. “The project was way too large for our island,” says Angeliki Synodinou, the mayor. Another foe of the plan, Daphne Mavrogiorgos, said the turbines would have been almost as high as the island’s loftiest peak. Speaking for Elliniki Etaireia, an NGO which defends the Aegean’s ecology, she said turbines are both desirable and aesthetically fine, but the scale must be right.
Yet advocates of wind insist that tourists and turbines can go together. In 2002, a survey of visitors to the west of Scotland (where wind farms abound) found that only 8% said their feelings were negatively affected by the blades; some 43% said the mills made them feel better about the region. “In China and Poland people go to wind farms to have wedding pictures taken,” notes Steve Sawyer, of the Brussels-based Global Wind Energy Council.
Apart from aesthetics, the threat to migratory birds is the most frequently cited argument against wind farms. Since June, Cape Wind has faced a legal challenge from a group that includes Californians who normally lobby in favour of renewable energy. Their case is that the park could violate the Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
In the Australian state of Victoria, concern over the threat that turbines could pose to the rare orange-bellied parrot nearly put paid to a wind farm, the Bald Hills project, in 2006. Earlier this year, the spectacular bird was again in the eye of an Australian storm, this time over another, larger wind park in Victoria, even though research had suggested that the threat to parrots is small. The park is going ahead.*
Some Australians fret more about the effect of turbines on humans. Residents of Waubra, a town near Victoria’s biggest wind generator, recently complained that low-frequency noise was causing headaches and earaches. Noel Dean, a local farmer, said he had to move his family away. He then commissioned a report that seemed to confirm his view.
But the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, which advises the federal government, thinks otherwise. In a report published in July it concluded there was no scientific evidence to suggest that noise, flickering shadows or glinting blades made people sick. It found that a wind farm with ten turbines made much less din than an office; in fact, only about the level that might be found in a quiet bedroom, or in a rural area at night. Britain’s National Health Service agrees: having studied the available research, it finds no proof of harm from turbines.
In practice, the way people feel about windmills may have as much to do with financial effects as with physical ones. Many people fear that turbines will instantly depress the value of property nearby, even if it enriches those whose land is used. Research in America and Britain suggests there is no consistent relationship between blades and property prices. But if enough people expect a negative effect, the fear will be self-fulfilling.
Flour, not power

According to Australia’s Clean Energy Council, an industry association, wind farms divide rural communities. On one side are those who are well paid by power companies for the right to set up turbines; on the other are their neighbours who gain nothing but a darkened skyline. Perhaps not surprisingly, the council found that people who benefited from turbines could endure the noise “despite exposure to similar sound levels as people who were not economically benefiting”.

Learning Danish
Both Australia and Greece have looked at how Denmark has fared with its community-owned wind farms. Danish lessons were used in the Australian town of Daylesford, where wind power has been accepted by the whole population, in the form of a two-turbine station meeting the needs of the area’s 2,300 homes. The project, known as Hepburn Wind, grew out of a campaign by a few devotees to educate people about clean energy. They then raised about A$8 million ($7.2m) from the locals. Simon Holmes à Court, one of the founders, says a “wind rush” by big developers in Victoria a few years ago turned some citizens off. Hepburn took a different line, with consultation and co-ownership.
Wind doesn’t always lead to political problems. In several countries where it flourishes—such as Germany, China and Spain—the technology is relatively free from controversy, whether because the public has been convinced, or is simply prepared to accept top-down decisions.
In fiercely democratic Greece, the potential for wind farms certainly exists, as anyone who sails the Aegean knows. And Tina Birbili, Greece’s environment and climate-change minister, says her country can follow Spain and Portugal in promoting wind energy, despite the local opposition it sometimes arouses. Next year her government will invite bids for offshore parks—after specifying, to the dismay of some contractors, that the government would identify the locations. This was denounced in some newspapers as too statist an approach; she disagrees. Far from frustrating investors, the policy would help them by offering a one-stop shop. It would pre-empt the objections that might be raised by various bits of the Greek government—from the culture ministry, protective of antiquities, to the foreign and defence ministries, mindful of security. In any case, Miss Birbili says, the state welcomes private-sector proposals for land-based parks.
For visitors to Greece, the words “windmill” and “Aegean” evoke stone buildings with white sails, like the newly rebuilt ones on Patmos (pictured). Planning laws prevent such structures from being used for electricity. Miss Birbili thinks giant, high-tech blades, looming over the wine-dark sea, could become an equally welcome sight. But it may be a while before a new Homer hymns them in verse.


*Correction: In the original version of this article, we said the Bald Hills project was located in the state of Queensland. The project is actually located in the state of Victoria. This has been corrected online.



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