Eideard

Doctor Patti McCarver meeting with a patient

With pain in her right ear, Sue Cassidy went to a clinic. The doctor, wearing a white lab coat with a stethoscope in one pocket, introduced herself.

“Hi. I’m Dr. Patti McCarver, and I’m your nurse,” she said. And with that, Dr. McCarver stuck a scope in Ms. Cassidy’s ear, noticed a buildup of fluid and prescribed an allergy medicine. It was something that will become increasingly routine for patients: a someone who is not a physician using the title of doctor.

Dr. McCarver calls herself a doctor because she returned to school to earn a doctorate last year, one of thousands of nurses doing the same recently. Doctorates are popping up all over the health professions, and the result is a quiet battle over not only the title “doctor,” but also the money, power and prestige that often comes with it.

As more nurses, pharmacists and physical therapists claim this honorific, physicians are fighting back.

An illegitimate characterization. “Fighting back” implies medical doctors are losing something. The quandary is over their ego-smitten self-worth. Standards for doctorates in most fields, medical or otherwise, allow the term “doctor” for anyone who reaches or surpasses those standards.

For nurses, getting doctorates can help them land a top administrative job at a hospital, improve their standing at a university and win them more respect from colleagues and patients. But so far, the new degrees have not brought higher fees from insurers for seeing patients or greater authority from states to prescribe medicines.

Nursing leaders say that their push to have more nurses earn doctorates has nothing to do with their fight of several decades in state legislatures to give nurses more autonomy, money and prescriptive power.

But many physicians are suspicious and say that once tens of thousands of nurses have doctorates, they will invariably seek more prescribing authority and more money. Otherwise, they ask, what is the point..?

The point is knowledge, skill and understanding. For the nurses. Obviously the point for the doctors is money and status. And money.

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Campaign billboard for Salem al-Shaali
Reuters Photo by Mahmoud Habboush

The United Arab Emirates is gearing up for the second elections in its 40-year history, but officials and candidates are finding it tough to answer a commonly asked question: why can’t everyone vote?

The UAE government in July hand-picked 129,000 voters to elect 20 of the 40 members of the Federal National Council (FNC), an advisory assembly with very limited parliamentary powers.

The pool represents 12 per cent of Emirati nationals in the Arabian Peninsula nation who will vote on September 24.

The rest of the council will be directly appointed by the Gulf Arab state, which is governed by several ruling families that transfer power from father to son, or brother to brother…

The wealthy Gulf oil nation has been virtually untouched by the Arab Spring, witnessing from afar the toppling of autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, and any hint of dissent has been swiftly stamped out.

This week’s elections are part of stated efforts by the seven emirate member states to gradually introduce representation and educate voters and candidates in its methods in an orderly way… Uh, OK.

The UAE government held seminars in the past few weeks for candidates about the rules of campaigning while at least one non-profit organization held a training course on “how to run a successful campaign.”

But many candidates still appear to lack a basic understanding of the FNC’s constitutional powers, which are virtually nil…Salem al-Shaali, a Dubai candidate, is campaigning on a platform to hand more power to the FNC.

He pledges, in an ad in Al Bayan, a Dubai newspaper, to “help FNC members obtain the right tools to be effective in the decision-making process.”

There have been growing demands by former FNC members and intellectuals to give the assembly real powers, introduce universal suffrage and fully elect the council, created in 1972…

Less than 7,000 people, or less than 1 percent of the population, were allowed to vote in the UAE’s first elections for the council in 2006.

I guess proceeding in the direction of democracy and participation of the electorate is always a positive. Still, there should be some effort for the voting franchise to move a little faster than, say, molasses on a cold day in Alaska.

RTFA for more history, anecdotal coverage from Reuters.

Click photo for video – about 9 minutes long. Sorry for the commercial.

John Taylor visited CNBC the other morning to discuss currency trading – a topic guaranteed to give you an ulcer if you do it for a living – or bore you into a greenback coma.

As an ingredient of his analysis, he makes the point that the Republican Party is using their majority in the House of Representatives to send our economy into another recession. We have left the boundaries of the Great Recession caused essentially by greedy investment banks and criminal mortgage procedures – aided by Republican policies obscuring and inhibiting oversight. They have decided to trigger another – deliberately.

He says this is a strategy decision by the Republican Party. Cause another recession – blame the Democrats and President Obama for it. Run for office as the alternative which will save the world.

I wonder if the Democrats and Obama have enough smarts, enough power to prevent this from happening?

The White House on Monday won a key endorsement for its proposal to boost U.S. electricity generation by clean energy sources as the head of the Senate’s energy panel said he could back the idea of including nuclear power in the fuel mix.

In his State of the Union speech to Congress last week, President Barack Obama proposed the United States produce 80 percent of its electricity from clean energy sources, such as wind, solar, “clean” coal and nuclear, by 2035.

Democratic Senator Jeff Bingaman, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said he supports including nuclear power in the White House’s clean energy standard as long as renewable energy sources like wind and solar also benefit.

“If we can develop a workable clean energy standard that actually continues to provide an incentive for renewable energy projects to move forward, and provide an additional incentive for some of the other clean energy technologies, nuclear being one, I would like to see that happen,” Senator Jeff Bingaman told reporters…

Bingaman said he has been in discussions with the White House over the last week on how to come up with a legislative proposal that would win bipartisan support in the Senate…

Such a bill would have a more difficult time clearing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives…

Analyst Christine Tezak said the best way for a clean energy standard to pass Congress is for the president to address some of the energy concerns of Republican lawmakers, such as expanding oil drilling and speeding up government approval of permits for energy exploration…

Yes, let’s don’t forget the traditional bosses of the Republican Party. Take your history all the way back to Standard Oil, watch the oil barons nudge their buddies from Wall Street finance aside while they exercise royal prerogative and demand opposition to any alternatives to fossil fuel profits.

VW Jetta TDI, 2.0L 140-hp turbodiesel, 3rd consecutive award winner

The auto industry is embracing the age of electrification, and so too is the Ward’s 10 Best Engines list.

Both the Nissan Leaf electric vehicle and Chevrolet Volt extended-range EV earn their way onto the 2011 list, as selected by Ward’s editors after evaluating 38 vehicles with new or significantly improved engines for the ’11 model year.

But fuel efficiency and environmental friendliness are not the most important criteria for eligibility this year, as seen by recognition of the new 5.0L V-8 in the Ford Mustang GT, 5.0L V-8 in the Hyundai Genesis and the 3.0L supercharged V-6 in the Audi S4.

“We have something for everybody on this year’s Ward’s 10 Best Engines list,” says Drew Winter, editor-in-chief of Ward’s AutoWorld magazine. “It’s the most diverse mix we’ve ever had, as well as the most technologically advanced.”

This year’s winners and the applications tested:

3.0L TFSI Supercharged DOHC V-6 (Audi S4)
3.0L N55 Turbocharged DOHC I-6 (BMW 335i)
1.6L Turbocharged DOHC I-4 (Mini Cooper S)
3.6L Pentastar DOHC V-6 (Dodge Avenger)
5.0L DOHC V-8 (Ford Mustang GT)
1.4L DOHC I-4/111kW Drive Motor (Chevrolet Volt)
5.0L Tau DOHC V-8 (Hyundai Genesis)
80kW AC Synchronous Electric Motor (Nissan Leaf)
2.0L DOHC I-4 Turbodiesel (Volkswagen Jetta TDI)
3.0L Turbocharged DOHC I-6 (Volvo S60)

Now in its 17th year, the Ward’s 10 Best Engines competition is designed to recognize powertrains that set new benchmarks in their respective vehicle segments.

“The one thing they have in common is they all are stand-out performers in their own way and sell the value proposition of the vehicles they power,” Winter says.

RTFA. The editors delve into each award and why. Just a paragraph or two; but, gives you a taste of the breadth of modern prize-winning design coming from auto engineers around the world.

Detailed analysis of each is in the upcoming issue of Ward’s Autoworld magazine and will be online, next week.

The core of the proposed North Sea grid

Ministers from 10 European countries bordering the North Sea have agreed the construction of a new offshore electricity grid.

The grid will link countries across Europe and make it much easier for member states to trade energy.

It will also simplify the exploitation of the 140 Gigawatt offshore windfarm currently being planned in the North Sea…

The Memorandum of Understanding was signed by the governments of the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

The new grid would be used to connect European grids to a large offshore windfarm currently in planning for the North Sea. The project is part of a concerted effort by the European Union to live up to its emissions targets and integrate the energy infrastructure.

One such cooperation is already in place. Norway and the Netherlands [.pdf] use so-called “high-voltage direct-current” links to pump energy back and forth between the two countries…

The North Sea grid is a highly ambitious project but could prove an important boost to countries whose location gives them an excess of solar or wind energy.

This project confounds so many aspects of political life in these United States, my friends and family will likely be discussing it most of the weekend. Why? Because it would be damned near impossible for us to accomplish the same thing – as useful as it would be.

Thanks, Tom, for the NordNed link

Babbage’s calculator – The Difference Engine

A UK campaign to build a truck-sized, prototype computer first envisaged in 1837 is gathering steam. More than 1,600 people have pledged money and support to build Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine.

Although elements of the engine have been built over the last 173 years, a complete working model of the steam-powered machine has never been made. The campaign hopes to gather donations from 50,000 supporters to kick-start the project.

“It’s an inspirational piece of equipment,” said John Graham-Cumming, author of the Geek Atlas, who has championed the idea.

“A hundred years ago, before computers were available, [Babbage] had envisaged this machine.”

Computer historian Dr Doron Swade said that rebuilding the machine could answer “profound historical questions. Could there have been an information age in Victorian times? That is a very interesting question,” he told BBC News.

The analytical engine was designed on paper by mathematician and engineer Charles Babbage. It was envisaged that it would be built out of brass and iron.

“What you realise when you read Babbage’s papers is that this was the first real computer,” said Mr Graham-Cumming. “It had expandable memory, a CPU, microcode, a printer, a plotter and was programmable with punch cards.

“It was the size of a small lorry and powered by steam but it was recognisable as a computer…”

This sounds like fun. I’ll see if I can squeeze a donation from my social security check, this month.

Berlin geothermal field, El Salvador, producing 104 MW

Dotted with active volcanoes, Central America is seeking to tap its unique geography to produce green energy and cut dependence on oil imports as demand for electricity outstrips supply. Sitting above shifting tectonic plates in the Pacific basin known to cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the region has huge potential for geothermal power generated by heat stored deep in the earth.

Geothermal power plants, while expensive to build, can provide a long-term, reliable source of electricity and are considered more environmentally friendly than large hydroelectric dams that can alter a country’s topography…

Guatemala, Central America’s biggest country, aims to produces 60 percent of its energy from geothermal and hydroelectric power by 2022.

The government is offering tax breaks on equipment to set up geothermal plants and electricity regulators are requiring distributors buy greater proportions of clean energy.

Some 1,640 feet below the summit of Guatemala’s active Pacaya volcano, which exploded in May, pipes carrying steam and water at 347 degrees Fahrenheit snake across the mountainside to one of two geothermal plants currently operating in the country.

Run by Israeli-owned Ormat Technologies Inc, the plant harnesses energy from water heated by chambers filled with molten rock deep beneath the ground. The company has been operating two plants in Guatemala for three years and wants to expand but is weighing the risks of drilling more costly exploratory wells…

More than a fifth of El Salvador’s energy needs come from two geothermal plants with installed capacity of 160 MW and investigations are being carried out to build a third.

Costa Rica, which has 152 megawatts of capacity in four geothermal plants, is due to bring a fifth plant online in January 2011 and is looking into building two more.

Nicaragua generates 66 MW from geothermal energy and in the next five years plans an increase to 166 MW.

Bravo!

The coneheads up at Los Alamos have participated in geothermal experiments, off and on, over the years. But, generally, the powers-that-be would rather keep the focus on death and destruction. Which is too bad. There’s enough intellectual horsepower there to lead to breakthroughs – no doubt.

As turboprop and jet aircraft climb or descend under certain atmospheric conditions, they can inadvertently seed mid-level clouds and cause narrow bands of snow or rain to develop and fall to the ground, new research finds.

Through this seeding process, they leave behind odd-shaped holes or channels in the clouds, which have long fascinated the public.

The key ingredient for developing these holes in the clouds: water droplets at subfreezing temperatures, below about 5 degrees Fahrenheit (-15 degrees Celsius). As air is cooled behind aircraft propellers or over jet wings, the water droplets freeze and drop toward Earth.

“Any time aircraft fly through these specific conditions, they are altering the clouds in a way that can result in enhanced precipitation nearby,” says Andrew Heymsfield, a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and lead author of a new study into the phenomenon.

“Just by flying an airplane through these clouds, you could produce as much precipitation as with seeding materials along the same path in the cloud…”

As far back as the 1940s, scientists have wondered about the causes of these clouds with gaps seemingly made by a giant hole punch. Researchers have proposed a number of possible aviation-related causes, from acoustic shock waves produced by jets, to local warming of the air along a jet’s path, to the formation of ice along jet contrails.

Indeed, the earliest observations implicated jet aircraft, but not propeller aircraft, as producing the holes.

Researchers in the 1980s observed that propeller aircraft could transform supercooled droplets into ice crystals, and experiments were launched in the 1990s to characterize the phenomenon.

RTFA – for the tale of how one group of researchers had the data they needed to understand this process – fall into their laps.

Photo by simontoplis

Which cities rule the world? When it comes to economic activity, political and intellectual influence and great places to live, one recent report holds few surprises.

New York, London and Tokyo all rank high in all of these categories, according to a 2010 survey of top world cities by property consultancy Knight Frank…

Knight Frank measures cities on four factors — economic activity, political power, knowledge base and quality of life — and then aggregates the scores to rank world cities…

According to its list, New York leads global powerhouses overall, overtaking London, which had topped the table last year.

Despite a reversal at the top in 2010, the leading four cities — New York, London, Paris and Tokyo — remained significantly ahead of any competition, scoring well ahead of their nearest rival, Los Angeles.

While these heavyweights rule on several fronts now, there are several up-and-coming cities to consider.

Chief among these emerging contenders is Berlin. Thanks to its quality of life, it was the highest overall riser in the survey, moving from 13th to eighth place.

Although Berlin remains outside the top 10 for its economic activity, political power and knowledge and influence, it is now rated by Knight Frank to be second in the world behind Paris for quality of life.

Beijing emerged as the second highest climber in the report, now ninth overall in the world, up from 12th in 2009.

As a political power, Beijing rose from seventh to fourth in the survey, overtaking London, Paris and Tokyo.

RTFA for the details, Top Ten. I’ve spent time in many of these and I think I’d be mellow in most – if I still cared to live in a city.