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DOUGLAS OSHEROFF has urged the Indian government to invest more in experimental physics to discover and develop new technologies, WebIndia123.com and the Deccan Herald in Bangalore reported Sept. 27 and 28. "Physics is not dead and still has a lot to offer to society as a number of mysteries of nature still remain [undiscovered]," he told reporters during a visit last month to India. Osheroff, a Nobel laureate and the J. G. Jackson and C. J. Wood Professor of Physics, lamented that students from Asia have moved away from pure physics, "lured by the bounty offered by information technology." Osheroff conceded that students might be under parental pressure to move into more secure and well-paid professions. "This tendency even prevails in Stanford University, but students should realize that even [the] study of pure physics could lead them to lucrative jobs," he said. During a lecture on "The Nature of Discovery in Physics" at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan cultural center in Bangalore, Osheroff called for greater support for scientific research and freedom for scientists to go beyond their proposed fields of study. He said major advances in science generally are made either through discovery of unexpected behavior or by the development of new technologies that allow people to see nature more clearly.
Earth's population doubled in the mid- to late-20th century, from 3 billion to 6 billion people, JAMES HOLLAND JONES, assistant professor of anthropological sciences, told the Palo Alto Weekly Sept. 28. WILLIAM H. DURHAM, chair of anthropological sciences, said that while population growth plays a major role in the state of the planet, additional factors also must be taken into account. Increasing, uneven consumption of resources is growing faster than population growth, he said, pointing to the expansion of technology that burns through energy and resource supplies. "You have to be more concerned with institutional inequality because it has to do more with scarcity of resources," he said.
From starfish on the Pacific Coast to a large moth dubbed the "black witch," creatures across North America and beyond are moving, in apparent reaction to a shifting climate and environment, the Sacramento Bee reported Sept. 12. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, some biologists, including TERRY ROOT, a senior fellow at the Center for Environmental Science and Policy, say people would be wise to take a cue from wildlife and get out of harm's way. "We need to start planning for more extreme events," Root said. "When things are changing as rapidly as the climate is changing right now, a lot more extreme events occur, both cold and warm. We need to be prepared for them, and we're not. We're not at all."
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