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Internet Trolls Really Are Horrible People

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/climate_desk/2014/02/internet_troll_personality_study_machiavellianism_narcissism_psychopathy.html

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n the past few years, the science of Internet trollology has made some strides. Last year, for instance, we learned that by hurling insults and inciting discord in online comment sections, so-called Internet trolls (who are frequently anonymous) have a polarizing effect on audiences, leading to politicization, rather than deeper understanding of scientific topics.

That’s bad, but it’s nothing compared with what a new psychology paper has to say about the personalities of trolls themselves. The research, conducted by Erin Buckels of the University of Manitoba and two colleagues, sought to directly investigate whether people who engage in trolling are characterized by personality traits that fall in the so-called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others).

It is hard to underplay the results: The study found correlations, sometimes quite significant, between these traits and trolling behavior. What’s more, it also found a relationship between all Dark Tetrad traits (except for narcissism) and the overall time that an individual spent, per day, commenting on the Internet.

In the study, trolls were identified in a variety of ways. One was by simply asking survey participants what they “enjoyed doing most” when on online comment sites, offering five options: “debating issues that are important to you,” “chatting with others,” “making new friends,” “trolling others,” and “other.” Here’s how different responses about these Internet commenting preferences matched up with responses to questions designed to identify Dark Tetrad traits:

E.E. Buckels et al, "Trolls just want to have fun," Personality and Individual Differences, 2014.

E.E. Buckels et al, “Trolls just want to have fun,” Personality and Individual Differences, 2014.

To be sure, only 5.6 percent of survey respondents actually specified that they enjoyed “trolling.” By contrast, 41.3 percent of Internet users were “non-commenters,” meaning they didn’t like engaging online at all. So trolls are, as has often been suspected, a minority of online commenters, and an even smaller minority of overall Internet users.

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February 15, 2014 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Japan’s nuclear re-start bogged down in safety checks and paperwork

“There’s a growing consensus from a purely economic perspective that Japan needs to re-start as many reactors as it can in order to build out the diversification of its power sources and reduce fuel prices,” said Tom O’Sullivan, founder of independent energy consultancy Mathyos Japan.

Forecasts that the first nuclear reactor would be back in operation by the middle of this year are misplaced, said Tetsuo Yuhara, a director at The Canon Institute of Global Studies, who previously spent 30 years at Mitsubishi Heavy.

“I have no forecast for re-starts. It’s the same situation as a year ago, as two years ago. Nothing has changed.”

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101401535

Published: Sunday, 9 Feb 2014

Hundreds of technicians and engineers are camped out in Tokyo hotels trying to revive Japan’s nuclear industry, shut down in the wake of the Fukushima disaster almost three years ago.

It’s proving a hard slog. A new, more independent regulator is in place, asking difficult questions and seeking to impose tougher safety rules on powerful utilities that were largely their own masters for the past 50 years.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) was created in 2012 and set new safety guidelines in July last year. It now has four teams vetting reactors at nine nuclear power stations on a list of those seeking to re-start. A deadline to complete the checks has been missed as the NRA is still asking for reams of information. No one is able to predict when the first of 48 reactors will be turned back on.

The delays are biting the utilities which are having to spend billions of dollars to import fossil fuels to keep the power on, pushing Japan into a record trade deficit and risking undermining Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s polices to end years of stagnant growth.

“All the utilities are in a similar situation and, unless outstanding issues are resolved, we can’t judge that they are in compliance with the standards,” Tomoya Ichimura, an NRA director, told Reuters.

SLOW PROGRESS

The regulator and staff from the utilities and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, a leading supplier of nuclear plant equipment, are ploughing through mountains of paperwork on the technical specifications of reactors and their vulnerability to natural disasters such as the earthquake and tsunami that knocked out the Fukushima Daiichi station in March 2011.

All lack experience in carrying out such detailed safety checks because of the lax regime that existed before Fukushima.

“Only the framework of the safety criteria was decided, not the details, so the dialogue between the NRA and power companies to work out the specifics is taking time,” said Seiichi Nakata, Project Leader, Department of Policy, Communication and International Affairs at the Japan Atomic Industry Forum.

And once the checks are done, reactors must undergo planned inspections, which took as long as two months under the previous regime, as well as get the go-ahead from local authorities before they can be turned back on. The plants are being treated as if they have just been built and are seeking certification to start operating for the first time.

Interviews with utility and nuclear industry staff, regulators and government officials reveal a climate of uncertainty, frustration and long hours.

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February 15, 2014 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

University of Bristol received £1.3m from secretive British organisation The Atomic Weapons Establishment

….Dr David McCoy, chairman of Medact, said: “Many aspects of scientific research work funded by the Atomic Weapons Establishment are conducted in sensitive and controversial areas, raising complex ethical and legal issues.”

AWE funds six professorships, named after its first director, Sir William Penney, at five universities. Two are at Cranfield, one at Cambridge, one at Bristol, one at Heriot-Watt and one at the University of Edinburgh…..

http://www.southwestbusiness.co.uk/news/14022014095216-university-of-bristol-received–1-3m-from-secretive-british-organisation-the-atomic-weapons-establishment/

14-February-2014
by The Bristol Post

 

Researchers at the  University of Bristol have received been paid £1.3 million from a secretive British nuclear weapons organisation.

 

A Freedom of Information Act  request has revealed The Atomic Weapons Establishment has forked out £8 million to 50 universities in the UK but just five, with one of them including  Bristol, have been the main beneficiaries.

 

The “Technical Outreach” programme between AWE and universities mainly supports scientific research in the physics, materials science, high performance computing, modelling, and manufacturing disciplines.

 

Although much of this work qualifies as “blue skies” research, which is not aimed at any particular application, some of it is considered to have “dual use” potential – the capability to be used for both benign, peaceful purposes and military purposes contributing to the development of weapons of mass destruction.

 

A Bristol University spokesperson said: “The university is one of five universities with which the AWE has strategic alliances. The relationship has been in place since 2009. Alongside the research projects (some of which are PhD studentships), the relationship seeks to encourage a range of activities which includes AWE involvement in giving seminars, contributing to teaching and joint workshops.

 

“Research we undertake with AWE is work the university proposes to AWE, work we are keen to pursue, which contributes towards areas such as safe operations, risk and cost reduction in storage of nuclear materials, and decommissioning of nuclear facilities.”

 

The report exposing the links has been published by two groups campaigning for nuclear disarmament, Nuclear Information Service and Medact, an NGO made up of health professionals.

 

Pete Wilkinson, director of Nuclear Information Service, said: “Many scientists frown on research which contributes to the development of weapons of mass destruction, however indirectly, and our study found that AWE values its academic outreach programme as much for the acceptance it buys for AWE’s own scientists in reputable academic circles as for its scientific findings. Universities and individual researchers are responsible for ensuring that their work meets accepted ethical standards, and our report aims to warn them of the risks from being seduced into murky waters by the lure of AWE’s cash.”

 

Dr David McCoy, chairman of Medact, said: “Many aspects of scientific research work funded by the Atomic Weapons Establishment are conducted in sensitive and controversial areas, raising complex ethical and legal issues.”

 

AWE funds six professorships, named after its first director, Sir William Penney, at five universities. Two are at Cranfield, one at Cambridge, one at Bristol, one at Heriot-Watt and one at the University of Edinburgh.

February 15, 2014 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Japan Physician: Parents should evacuate children from Tokyo; Danger from Fukushima radiation — “The threat has seemed to be spreading” — “I’ve seen a lot of patients badly affected”

Published: February 14th, 2014 at 6:33 pm ET
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http://enenews.com/japan-physician-parents-should-evacuate-children-from-tokyo-danger-from-fukushima-radioactivity-the-threat-has-seemed-to-be-spreading-ive-seen-a-lot-of-patients-who-are-badly-af

Excerpts from an interview with Tokyo-based physician Shigeru Mita, Nelson Groom for Vice.com, Feb. 14, 2014 (h/t anonymous tip):

The Threat

  • I’ve done examinations on more than 1,500 patients. […] I run blood work and conduct thyroid ultrasound examinations. […] I’ve mostly tested patients living in Tokyo, and I’ve found a lot of harmful symptoms in children, especially in kindergarten students or elementary school […] serious effects in the elderly. There have been abnormalities in their differential white-blood-cell count […] decline in the neutrophil […] I conducted the first tests in December 2011 […] the threat has seemed to be spreading into Tokyo since then.

The ‘Cure’

  • There was a baby with a serious illness. […] she had no neutrophils. […] Thankfully, she recovered after moving to the Kyushu area. […] there aren’t any medicines to help […] I’ve seen a lot of patients from Tokyo who are badly affected, but when they move […] they get better. After they come back to Tokyo, it gets worse again.

The Cover-up

  • I believe [TEPCO’s reporting on the radiation] must be false. That said, discussing this is a waste of time. We need to use this time to help patients rather than discussing the validity of these statements. That’s the most pressing concern.

The Food

  • In Japan, commercial distribution is prosperous, so some of the contaminated food is definitely coming to Tokyo. […] we should be testing everything thoroughly, and that at least children should be spared […]

The Media

  • They are definitely not focusing on this particular concern. I believe the Japanese media have taken side with a small number of powerful people.

The Public

  • People living in eastern Japan […] are trying to look away from the dangers of radioactivity. Hence they avoid taking the matter seriously.

The Future

  • I worry about the children, their parents, and the children who will be born in the future. I want the patients to move to the safer place [and] strongly recommend that anyone living in the area head to a safer place one or two months out of the year. I encourage everyone living in Tokyo to take blood tests as frequently as possible. […]

More from Dr. Mita here: I hope adults will leave Tokyo, not just children — Strange things happening — Medications don’t seem to work — Rare diseases increasing dramatically

February 15, 2014 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

EU-funded Study: Over 20,000 square miles of Japan potentially contaminated from Fukushima releases — Home to 43 million people

http://enenews.com/eu-funded-study-56000-square-km-japan-potentially-contaminated-fukushima-releases-home-43-million-people

Published: February 13th, 2014 at 9:28 am ET
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5x_US_map1.jpg

European Commission, Science for Environment Policy News Alert (pdf) (emphasis added): […] The EU-funded study modelled the global spread of radionuclides of caesium and iodine from Fukushima […] between March and May 2011 […] It focused on radionuclides that were emitted as gases […] The International Atomic Energy Agency defines ’contamination’ as the presence of a radioactive substance in quantities more than 40 kilobecquerels per m². […] land area affected by radioactivity from both types of radionuclides above this threshold is approximately 34,000 km² of Japan, inhabited by around 9.4 million people. However, the estimate used for the iodine radionuclide emissions from the incident is considered to be an underestimate. A separate calculation which assumed source emissions that were five times greater, suggested that a relatively large and densely populated part of Japan – 56,000 km² [21,622 square miles] – would be classified as contaminated. […] It should be emphasised that this refers to two radionuclides only, whereas additional ones are unaccounted for due to a lack of measurements. […]

Screenshot from 2014-02-15 02:21:44

Modelling the global atmospheric transport and deposition of radionuclides from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear accident (pdf), 2013 (emphasis added): Chino et al. (2011) estimate a total [131I] release of 150 PBq […] results are considered by [the] authors to be lower estimates and to have an error of at least a factor of five. Winiarek et al. (2012) estimate the lower bound of the total activity of 131I released into the atmosphere […] between 190 and 700 PBq […] We estimate that the land area affected by the deposition of radioactivity in excess of 40 kBqm² is approximately 34,000 km². […] this part of Japan is inhabited by 9.4 million people. The surface area that received a total deposition greater than 10 kBqm² encompasses parts of the Tokyo metropolitan area, and approximately covers 60,000 km2, being inhabited by 46 million people. We emphasize that this is based on the emission of 150 PBq 131I estimated by Chino et al. (2011), which might actually be a factor of five too low.

Discussion Paper (pdf): To test the potential of a larger source than 150 PBq 131I, we performed a sensitivity test by applying 5 times higher emissions, based on the emissions estimate uncertainty by Chino et al. (2011). […] an area of 56,000 km², inhabited by 43 million people, would be contaminated by more than 40 kBqm², including the Tokyo metropolitan area. Although this large 131I source is speculative, it seems more realistic than the low estimate of 150 PBq […]

View the full European Commission News Alert here (pdf)

February 15, 2014 Posted by | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

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