Check out the fascinating natural wonder that functions as the keeper of millions of gallons of radioactive waste. Miller-McCune's Matt Palmquist journeyed underground to a salt formation in southeast New Mexico that is home to the world’s sole functioning “deep geologic nuclear waste disposal site.” The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) has been highly effective and accident free in its decade of existence, with one researcher boasting that it’s “safer than working at Toys R Us.” Bonus: There’s a video on the WIPP site if you’re interested in a visual overview of the storage process.

Source: Miller-McCune

Image by dsearls, licensed under Creative Commons.

Hospitals are always looking for ways to save money. Here's one that might surprise you: hospitals that reach out to help homeless people before they pass through emergency room doors can save hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. That's according to two studies, one in Chicago and the other in Seattle.

The Chicago study, according to Miller-McCune, focused on 600 chronically ill homeless people, with 200 of them receiving case management and housing:

The group included people living on the street from 30 days to 30 years, in many ways mirroring the 3.5 million Americans (and growing) who face homelessness at some point during the year.

Researchers also selected those with chronic health conditions other than mental health or substance abuse, although participants with these and other conditions were not excluded.

"We wanted, in part, to show whether or not this model works, but we also wanted the literature to broaden and not portray the homeless as severely mentally ill or alcohol dependent or drug abusers because that's just a small portion of the homeless," Dr. Laura Sadowski said.

After 18 months, the group of 200 patients with housing — the intervention group — each made at least one trip to the hospital, but overall they reduced their hospitalizations on average by 2.7 days per person per year, which translates into hundreds of thousands of dollars, far more than the costs of providing the services.

Source: Miller-McCune 

Image by  Franco Folini . Licensed under  Creative Commons . 

Who knew Colonel Mustard and Miss Scarlet could help robots navigate mine fields? Matt Palmquist reports in Miller-McCune that the classic whodunit board game inspired engineers at Duke University to create an algorithm that combines the treasure hunt nature of the detective game with aspects of minesweeping, and it has been overwhelmingly successful at beating experienced Clue players even. The findings suggest robots might be able to use it to locate mines more quickly and efficiently because the success of the algorithm rests on “its strategy of selecting movements and optimizing its ability to incorporate new information, while minimizing the distance traveled by the pawn,” according to a lab director at Duke. Frankly I can’t quip a better conclusion than Palmquist’s summary, “In other words: It was the robot, in the library, with the minesweeper.”

Source: Miller-McCune

Miller-McCune won an Utne Independent Press Award this year for its superb science/tech coverage.

Image by katherine lynn, licensed under Creative Commons.

In a politically polarized America, the quest for common ground between liberals and conservatives can feel like a search for the lost coty of Atlantis. The work of psychologist Jonathan Haidt, highlighted in Miller-McCune, sheds light on this political division, finding there isn’t simply one moral compass, but five “moral realms” on which we place importance. For liberals, ideas of harm/care and fairness/reciprocity reign supreme, while conservatives focus more on in-group loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity.

Some issues may gain supporters on both political sides because of their appeal across different moral realms. Haidt highlights the environmental movement as one example, where liberals were likely motivated by the harm/care dimension, while conservative Evangelical Christians found it spoke to their emphasis on authority/respect. "They're driven by the idea that God gave man dominion over the Earth, and keeping the planet healthy is our sacred responsibility. If we simply rape, pillage, destroy and consume, we're abusing the power given to us by God.”

"The climate crisis and the economic crisis are interesting, because neither has a human enemy," he adds. "These are not crises that turn us against an out-group, so they're not really designed to bring us together, but they can be used for that. I hope and think we are ready, demographically and historically, for a less polarized era."

But that, says Miller-McCune's Tom Jacobs, "will require peeling off some bumper stickers. Contrary to the assertion adhered onto Volvos, dissent and patriotism are very different impulses. But Haidt persuasively argues that both are essential to a healthy democracy, and the interplay between them — when kept within respectful bounds — is a source of vitality and strength."

Source: Miller-McCune

For thousands of years, humans have been trading biodiversity for homogeny: Diverse forests for monoculture tree farms, grasslands for agriculture, and oceans for fish farms. This process is simply unsustainable, ecology professor Shahid Naeem writes for Miller-McCune. The drive to domesticate the earth creates an existential crisis for humans, according to Naeem, because “All aspects of human well-being and prosperity trace back to biodiversity for their foundation.”

The natural functions of the earth are based on biodiversity. Naeem writes about a study he was involved in proving that “More diversity led to greater absorption of carbon dioxide.” Even knowing this, biodiversity loss continues to be “the single most prevalent feature of our changing world.”

Species extinction is just one part of the problem, though a significant one. Rounding up wildlife into reserves and domesticating plants and animals also diminishes the earth’s diversity. “Even without the loss of a single species, with increasing homogenization biodiversity declines.”

In order to create a more sustainable ecosystem, humans need to take responsibility for creating a more equitable one, according to Naeem. Rather than the more Judeo-Christian system of human dominion over the animals, people need to think of themselves as a necessary part of the earth’s biodiversity, and they need work to keep it that way.

Image by  Cindy Sims Parr , licensed under  Creative Commons .

Source:  Miller-McCune  

Sometimes you need science to crack the thick skulls in the business world. “Over the past several years,” writes Pepperdine University Marketing Professor Roy Douglas Adler in Miller-McCune, “my colleagues and I have tracked the performance of Fortune 500 companies with a strong record of promoting women to the executive suite. The correlation between high-level female executives and business success has been consistent and revealing. Any action that shows a consistent correlation to high profits would probably be of interest to companies struggling to swim against the tide of these perilous times.”

Source: Miller-McCune 

“Like Cheez Whiz and the atom bomb, modern think tanks are a distinctly U.S. invention that has spread all over the world.”

—Jeff Gailus, “Mind Games,” from Alberta Views (not available online)

“The country’s run itself down, drinking too many subprime-mortgage martinis and smoking too many credit-default-swap cigarettes; having ignored clear signs its lifestyle was out of control, the nation’s caught a raging, recessionary cold that just might turn into the dangerous flu-monia of economic depression.”

—John Mecklin, “Work Out Plan,” from Miller-McCune

“Every morning, I throw on one of my many pairs of faded jeans, a shirt bearing the image of a radical band or en electric guitar, and a Superman watch with silver bullets on the wristband. . . . The fact that I’m almost three bucks over 30 and a long-married mother of two kids makes my fashion sense all the more creepy.”

—Hope Gatto, “Rocker Mama,” from Mothering (not available online)

“This would have been a big year for Darwin, if he had been fit enough to survive this long.”

—Grant Bartley, “God or Nature?” from Philosophy Now

Sources: Alberta Views, Miller-McCune, Mothering, Philosophy Now

Image by Pixel Drip, licensed under Creative Commons.