New analysis suggests Civil War took bigger toll than previously estimated
September 21, 2011
The Civil War – already considered the deadliest conflict in American history – in fact took a toll far more severe than previously estimated. That’s what a new analysis of census data by Binghamton University historian J. David Hacker reveals.
Hacker says the war’s dead numbered about 750,000, an estimate that’s 20 percent higher than the commonly cited figure of 620,000. His findings will be published in December in the journal Civil War History.
“The traditional estimate has become iconic,” Hacker says. “It’s been quoted for the last hundred years or more. If you go with that total for a minute – 620,000 – the number of men dying in the Civil War is more than in all other American wars from the American Revolution through the Korean War combined. And consider that the American population in 1860 was about 31 million people, about one-tenth the size it is today. If the war were fought today, the number of deaths would total 6.2 million.”
The 620,000 estimate, though widely cited, is also widely understood to be flawed. Neither the Union nor the Confederacy kept standardized personnel records. And the traditional estimate of Confederate war dead – 258,000 – was based on incomplete battle reports and a crude guess of deaths from disease and other non-combat causes. Although it is impossible to catalogue the fate of each of the 3 million or more men who fought in the war from 1861-65, some researchers have tried to re-count deaths in selected companies, regiments and areas. But Hacker says these attempts at a direct count will always miss people and therefore always underestimate deaths.
“There are also huge problems estimating mortality with census data,” Hacker explains. “You can track the number of people of certain ages from one census to the next, and you can see how many are missing. But the potential problem with that is that each census undercounted people by some unknown amount, and an unknown number of people moved in and out of the country between censuses.”
However, new data sets produced in the last 10 years or so, instead of giving the aggregate number of people in certain age groups, identify each person and his or her age, race and birthplace. Hacker realized that civilian deaths were so low relative to soldiers’ deaths that he could compare the number of native-born men missing in the 1870 Census relative to the number of native-born women missing and produce an estimate from that.
Hacker looked at the ratio of male survival relative to female survival for each age group. He established a “normal” pattern in survival rates for men and women by looking at the numbers for 1850-1860 and 1870-1880. Then he compared the war decade, 1860-1870, relative to the pattern.
His new estimate of Civil War deaths contains a wide margin: 650,000 to 850,000, with 750,000 as the central figure.
Pulitzer Prize-winner James McPherson, the preeminent living historian of the war, says he finds Hacker’s estimate plausible.
“Even if it might not be quite as high as 750,000, I have always been convinced that the consensus figure of 620,000 is too low, and especially that the figure of 260,000 Confederate dead is definitely too low,” McPherson says. “My guess is that most of the difference between the estimate of 620,000 and Hacker’s higher figure is the result of underreported Confederate deaths.”
Like earlier estimates, Hacker’s includes men who died in battle as well as soldiers who died as a result of poor conditions in military camps.
“Roughly two out of three men who died in the war died from disease,” Hacker says. “The war took men from all over the country and brought them all together into camps that became very filthy very quickly.” Deaths resulted from diarrhea, dysentery, measles, typhoid and malaria, among other illnesses.
McPherson says the new figure should gain acceptance among historians of the era.
“An accurate tally – or at least a reasonable estimate – is important in order to gauge the huge impact of the war on American society,” he says. “Even if the number of war dead was ‘only’ 620,000, that still created a huge impact, especially in the South, and a figure of 750,000 makes that impact – and the demographic shadow it threw on the next two generations of Americans – just that much greater.”
Contact: Gail Glover
gglover@binghamton.edu
607-777-2174
Binghamton University
Power corrupts, especially when it lacks status
September 20, 2011
Ever wonder why that government clerk was so rude and condescending? Or why the mid-level manager at your company always doles out the most demeaning tasks? Or, on a more profound level, why the guards at Abu Ghraib tortured and humiliated their prisoners?
In a new study, researchers at USC, Stanford and the Kellogg School of Management have found that individuals in roles that possess power but lack status have a tendency to engage in activities that demean others. According to the study, “The Destructive Nature of Power without Status,” the combination of some authority and little perceived status can be a toxic combination.
The research, forthcoming in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, is “based on the notions that a) low-status is threatening and aversive and b) power frees people to act on their internal states and feelings.” The study was conducted by Nathanael Fast, assistant professor of management and organization at the USC Marshall School of Business; Nir Halevy, acting assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business; and Adam Galinsky, professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
To test their theses, the authors conducted an experiment with students who were told they would be interacting with a fellow student in a business exercise and were randomly assigned to either a high-status “Idea Producer” role or low-status “Worker” role. Then these individuals were asked to select activities from a list of 10 for the others to perform; some of the tasks were more demeaning than others.
The experiment demonstrated that “individuals in high-power/low-status roles chose more demeaning activities for their partners (e.g., bark like a dog three times) than did those in any other combination of power and status roles.”
According to the study, possessing power in the absence of status may have contributed to the acts committed by U.S. soldiers in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2004. That incident was reminiscent of behaviors exhibited during the famous Stanford Prison Experiment with undergraduate students that went awry in the early 1970s. In both cases the guards had power, but they lacked respect and admiration in the eyes of others and in both cases prisoners were treated in extremely demeaning ways.
Fast said that he and his colleagues focused on the relationship between power and status because “although a lot of work has looked at these two aspects of hierarchy, it has typically looked at the isolated effects of either power or status, not both. We wanted to understand how those two aspects of hierarchy interact. We predicted that when people have a role that gives them power but lacks status – and the respect that comes with that status – then it can lead to demeaning behaviors. Put simply, it feels bad to be in a low status position and the power that goes with that role gives them a way to take action on those negative feelings.”
Social hierarchy, the study says, does not on its own generate demeaning tendencies. In other words, the idea that power always corrupts may not be entirely true. Just because someone has power or, alternatively, is in a “low status” role does not mean they will mistreat others. Rather, “power and status interact to produce effects that cannot be fully explained by studying only one or the other basis of hierarchy.”
One way to overcome this dynamic, according to the authors, is to find ways for all individuals, regardless of the status of their roles, to feel respected and valued. The authors write: “ respect assuages negative feelings about their low-status roles and leads them to treat others positively.”
Opportunities for advancement may also help. “If an individual knows he or she may gain a higher status role in the future, or earn a bonus for treating others well, that may help ameliorate their negative feelings and behavior,” Fast said.
The researchers conclude, however, that, “Our findings indicate that the experience of having power without status, whether as a member of the military or a college student participating in an experiment, may be a catalyst for producing demeaning behaviors that can destroy relationships and impede goodwill.”
Contact: Amy Blumenthal
amyblume@marshall.usc.edu
213-740-5552
University of Southern California
Intuitive thinking may influence belief in God
September 20, 2011
Intuition may lead people toward a belief in the divine and help explain why some people have more faith in God than others, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
In a series of studies, researchers at Harvard University found that people with a more intuitive thinking style tend to have stronger beliefs in God than those with a more reflective style. Intuitive thinking means going with one’s first instinct and reaching decisions quickly based on automatic cognitive processes. Reflective thinking involves the questioning of first instinct and consideration of other possibilities, thus allowing for counterintuitive decisions.
“We wanted to explain variations in belief in God in terms of more basic cognitive processes,” researcher Amitai Shenhav said. “Some say we believe in God because our intuitions about how and why things happen lead us to see a divine purpose behind ordinary events that don’t have obvious human causes. This led us to ask whether the strength of an individual’s beliefs is influenced by how much they trust their natural intuitions versus stopping to reflect on those first instincts.”
The research was published online in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. The study from the Harvard University Psychology Department was conducted by Shenhav, a doctoral student; post-doctoral fellow David Rand, PhD; and associate professor Joshua Greene, PhD.
In the first part of the study, 882 U.S. adults, with a mean age of 33 and consisting of 64 percent women, completed online surveys about their belief in God before taking a cognitive reflection test. The test had three math problems with incorrect answers that seemed intuitive. For example, one question stated: “A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?” The automatic or intuitive answer is 10 cents, but the correct answer is 5 cents. Participants who had more incorrect answers showed a greater reliance on intuition than reflection in their thinking style.
Participants who gave intuitive answers to all three problems were 1 ½ times as likely to report they were convinced of God’s existence as those who answered all of the questions correctly. That pattern was found regardless of other demographic factors, such as the participants’ political beliefs, education or income. “How people think — or fail to think — about the prices of bats and balls is reflected in their thinking, and ultimately their convictions, about the metaphysical order of the universe,” the journal article stated.
Participants with an intuitive thinking style also were more likely to have become more confident believers in God over their lifetimes, regardless of whether they had a religious upbringing. Individuals with a reflective style tended to become less confident in their belief in God. The study also found that this pronounced link between differing thinking styles and levels of faith could not be explained by differences in the participants’ thinking ability or IQ. “Basic ways of thinking about problem solving in your everyday life are predictive of how much you believe in God,” Rand said. “It’s not that one way is better than the other. Intuitions are important and reflection is important, and you want some balance of the two. Where you are on that spectrum affects how you come out in terms of belief in God.”
In another study, with 373 participants, the researchers found they could temporarily influence levels of faith by instructing participants to write a paragraph describing a personal experience where either intuitive or reflective thinking led to a good result. One group was told to describe a time in their lives when intuition or first instinct led to a good outcome, while a second group was instructed to write about an experience where a good outcome resulted from reflecting and carefully reasoning through a problem. When they were surveyed about their beliefs after the writing exercise, participants who wrote about a successful intuitive experience were more likely to report they were convinced of God’s existence than those who wrote about a successful reflective experience.
These studies suggest a causal link between intuitive thinking and a belief in God, but the researchers acknowledged the opposite may also be true, that a belief in God may lead to intuitive thinking. Future research will help explore how cognitive styles are influenced by genes and environmental factors, such as upbringing and education, Rand said.
The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world’s largest association of psychologists. APA’s membership includes more than 154,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of promoting health, education and human welfare.
Article: “Divine Intuition: Cognitive Style Influences Belief in God,” Amitai Shenhav; David G. Rand, PhD; and Joshua D. Greene, PhD; Harvard University; Journal of Experimental Psychology: General; online.
Full text of the article is available from the APA Public Affairs Office and at http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-ofp-shenhav.pdf Amitai Shenhav can be contacted at ashenhav@wjh.harvard.edu or (510) 388-0469.
Contact: APA Public Affairs
public.affairs@apa.org
202-336-5700
American Psychological Association
Black white marriages increased rapidly since 1980s, study finds
September 15, 2011
A new study of interracial marriages in the United States since the 1980s suggests that the racial boundary between blacks and whites continues to break down, but is not yet close to disappearing. The study, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, reveals that marriages between black and white populations have continued to increase while Latin and Hispanic Americans have turned to marrying their racial compatriots from newly arrived immigrant populations.
Marriages between African Americans and whites increased rapidly between 1980 and 2008, outpacing the rate of unions between whites and other ethnic and racial groups, including Latinos, Asian Americans and American Indians. However, the total number of marriages between blacks and whites continues to be much smaller than those between whites and other racial and ethnic groups.
“The number of marriages between whites and African Americans is undeniably increasing rapidly, but it is still a small number,” said Zhenchao Qian, lead author of the study and professor of sociology at Ohio State University. “Our results point to better race relations in 2008 than 1980, but we still have a way to go. The racial boundary is blurred, but it is still there.”
In 1980, only 5 percent of black men married a white woman, but that increased to 14 percent in 2008. Still, by comparison, 38 percent of Asian American men and Hispanic men married a white woman in 2008.
The study uses data from the 2008 American Community Survey, an ongoing survey of American households conducted by the U.S. Census bureau. The survey includes about 3 million people a year. The researchers also use data from the 1980 U.S. census.
“Understanding changes in interracial marriages is complex because it involves two different factors,” said Qian, “the marriage market of who is available to marry and also individuals’ choices about who they would be willing to marry.”
Overall, while marriages between blacks and whites showed large increases between 1980 and 2008, there was only a slight increase in marriages between whites and Hispanics while the results showed that marriages between U.S. born and foreign born Asians and Hispanics increased rapidly between 2000 and 2008.
This is due to the increase in immigration of Hispanics and Asians into the United States resulting in a larger pool of potential marriage partners from their own racial and ethnic groups.
“With the enormous growth of the immigrant population, Asians and Hispanics now have more opportunities than ever to find a marital partner who shares the same cultural background. Such marriages reinforce their cultural identity,” said co-author Dr Daniel Lichter from Cornell University.
“It used to be that race trumped everything, including education, when it came to marriage between blacks and whites; that is changing,” concluded Qian “For the first time, we found that highly educated blacks and whites were more likely to intermarry. That is very significant and is another sign that racial boundaries are blurring.”
Contact: Ben Norman
Scholarlynews@wiley.com
44-012-437-70375
Wiley-Blackwell
How do political debates affect advertising?
September 14, 2011
Advertisers covet spots during political debates, which often draw large numbers of viewers. But according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, political debate can sometime decrease the effectiveness of subsequent ads.
“This enduring popularity generates an intense competition for the commercial slots that follow broadcast debates,” write authors Alison Jing Xu (University of Toronto) and Robert S. Wyer Jr. (The Chinese University of Hong Kong). “The fact that these commercials are widely viewed, however, does not guarantee their effectiveness.”
The authors studied (and manipulated) the mindsets of participants who were exposed to various types of persuasive communications. “We proposed and found that inducing participants to make supportive elaborations on a series of propositions activated a bolstering mindset that increased the effectiveness of an unrelated, subsequent ad,” the authors write. But the authors found that participants who activated a counterarguing mindset were less persuaded by the same ads.
In one experiment, the authors found that consumers in a bolstering mindset (people who generated thoughts about positions they already agreed with) were more likely to be persuaded by a vacation spot ad than their counterparts who were in the counterarguing mindset, which increased the number of negative thoughts toward the vacation spot.
In another study, the authors tested participants who self-categorized as Republicans, Democrats, or independents by assigning them to one of four conditions. Some watched Barack Obama’s speech on his economic plan. Others watched a speech by John McCain, a debate between the two candidates, or nothing at all. “Participants with a strong a priori preference for either candidate were motivated to bolster their preferred candidate’s speech,” the authors write. “In all cases, developing a bolstering mindset increased participants’ evaluations of the brands promoted in the commercial. However, acquiring a counterarguing mindset decreased participants’ evaluations of that brand.”
“Even though the quality of an ad plays an important role in determining its impact, the context in which is appears can sometimes decrease its effectiveness,” the authors conclude.
Alison Jing Xu and Robert S. Wyer Jr. “The Role of Bolstering and Counterarguing Mindsets in Persuation.” Journal of Consumer Research (published online June 30, 2011). See http://ejcr.org for further information.
Contact: Mary-Ann Twist
JCR@bus.wisc.edu
608-255-5582
University of Chicago Press Journals
How do political debates affect advertising?
September 14, 2011
Advertisers covet spots during political debates, which often draw large numbers of viewers. But according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, political debate can sometime decrease the effectiveness of subsequent ads.
“This enduring popularity generates an intense competition for the commercial slots that follow broadcast debates,” write authors Alison Jing Xu (University of Toronto) and Robert S. Wyer Jr. (The Chinese University of Hong Kong). “The fact that these commercials are widely viewed, however, does not guarantee their effectiveness.”
The authors studied (and manipulated) the mindsets of participants who were exposed to various types of persuasive communications. “We proposed and found that inducing participants to make supportive elaborations on a series of propositions activated a bolstering mindset that increased the effectiveness of an unrelated, subsequent ad,” the authors write. But the authors found that participants who activated a counterarguing mindset were less persuaded by the same ads.
In one experiment, the authors found that consumers in a bolstering mindset (people who generated thoughts about positions they already agreed with) were more likely to be persuaded by a vacation spot ad than their counterparts who were in the counterarguing mindset, which increased the number of negative thoughts toward the vacation spot.
In another study, the authors tested participants who self-categorized as Republicans, Democrats, or independents by assigning them to one of four conditions. Some watched Barack Obama’s speech on his economic plan. Others watched a speech by John McCain, a debate between the two candidates, or nothing at all. “Participants with a strong a priori preference for either candidate were motivated to bolster their preferred candidate’s speech,” the authors write. “In all cases, developing a bolstering mindset increased participants’ evaluations of the brands promoted in the commercial. However, acquiring a counterarguing mindset decreased participants’ evaluations of that brand.”
“Even though the quality of an ad plays an important role in determining its impact, the context in which is appears can sometimes decrease its effectiveness,” the authors conclude.
Alison Jing Xu and Robert S. Wyer Jr. “The Role of Bolstering and Counterarguing Mindsets in Persuation.” Journal of Consumer Research (published online June 30, 2011). See http://ejcr.org for further information
Contact: Mary-Ann Twist
JCR@bus.wisc.edu
608-255-5582
University of Chicago Press Journals
Researchers predict extreme summertime temperatures to become a regular occurrence
September 9, 2011
In an article in the current issue of the journal Climatic Change Letters, Boston University researchers have estimated the impact near-term increases in global-mean temperatures will have on summertime temperatures in the U.S. and around the globe.
The “2°C global warming target” is in reference to the current international efforts to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases and limit human-induced global-mean near-surface temperature increases to 2°C (3.5°F) relative to the pre-industrial era, three-fifths of which has already occurred.
“We wanted to determine the impact such a temperature increase might have upon the frequency of seasonal-mean temperature extremes in various regions of the world, even if we were to avoid this target” said Bruce Anderson, associate professor of geography and environment and the study’s principal author. “In particular, we wanted to determine if preventing the global-mean temperature increase from reaching this threshold would prevent extreme temperature values from becoming a normal occurrence in these regions.”
Anderson’s research indicates that if the 2°C increase were to come to pass 70-80% of the land surface will experience summertime temperature values that exceed observed historical extremes (equivalent to the top 5% of summertime temperatures experienced during the second half of the 20th century) in at least half of all years. In other words, even if an increase in the global mean temperature is limited to 2°C, current historical extreme values will still effectively become the norm for 70-80% of the earth’s land surface.
“Many regions of the globe – including much of Africa, the southeastern and central portions of Asia, Indonesia, and the Amazon – are already committed to reaching this point, given current amounts of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere” said Anderson. Global-mean temperatures are expected to increase an additional 0.6°C (1°F) over the coming decades even if no more carbon dioxide, methane, or other heat-trapping gases are added to the atmosphere.
In the United States, the impacts are expected to be most severe over the western third of the country. “In these regions, if the 2°C threshold is passed, it is more likely than not that every summer will be an extreme summer compared with today,” said Anderson. Further, the region is expected to follow soon after Africa, Asia, and the Amazon as one in which summertime temperature extremes will become the norm. “While the western third of the U.S. is not committed to reaching such a situation, it is certainly on the brink,” said Anderson.
“While previous work, including our own and that of researchers at Stanford, has highlighted that summertime temperature extremes, and how frequently they occur, will change significantly even in response to relatively small increases in global-mean temperatures, the extent and immediacy of the results really caught us off guard,” said Anderson. “Because these results are referenced to increases in global-mean temperatures, and not some particular time or change in amount of heat-trapping gases, they hold whether we reach this global-mean temperature increase in the next 40-50 years as currently projected, or the next century. They really are telling us that this is a temperature threshold that poses significant risks to our lives and livelihoods.”
Extreme summertime temperatures killed tens of thousands in Europe in 2003 and Russia in 2010 and produced over $50 billion in agriculture losses across the central and eastern U.S. in 1988. In addition, at least 18 states, including much of the southern and south-eastern U.S., suffered through these types of extreme conditions this past summer.
“We find that the results are sensitive to both the observational dataset used to determine the range of historical variability and the numerical model data used to determine the grid-point increases in future temperatures,” said Anderson. Despite these caveats, the findings suggest that substantial fractions of the globe could experience seasonal-mean temperature extremes with high regularity well before the 2°C global-warming target is reached.
Contact information for the authors:
Bruce Anderson
Associate Professor of Geography and Environment
Boston University
Phone: +1-617-353-4807
Email: brucea@bu.edu
NOTE: The National Climate Data Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is scheduled to release its latest (August 2011) State of the Climate update on Thursday, September 8 by 1:00 p.m. EDT. The update, which relates directly to the findings in the Climatic Change article, can be found here: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/
Reference
Anderson BT (2011) Near-term increase in frequency of seasonal temperature extremes prior to the 2°C global warming target. Climatic Change Letters. DOI 10.1007/s10584-011-0196-4.
Contact: Patrick Farrell
pmfarrel@bu.edu
617-358-1185
Springer
When race, religion and democracy collide
September 9, 2011
From the events of September 11 nearly ten years ago to the recent acts of terrorism in Norway, race, religion and democracy continue to collide in tragic ways. A new issue of The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (published by SAGE) titled “Race, Religion, and Late Democracy,” looks at the intersections of all three and further examines their predictors and aftermath.
“In a democracy, we, the people, try to make sure, of course, that the loudest voices listen to the softest ones, at least some of the time,” wrote issue co-editors John L. Jackson, Jr and David Kyuman Kim.
To help explore the issues around race, religion and democracy, Jackson and Kim sought work from prominent contributors who research and analyze where these issues meet. This issue of The ANNALS examines the symbiotic connections shared by race, religion, and democracy, and calls for reframing the existing discourse on democracy to reflect the mutually inclusive nature of these forces. The authors show that race and religion can be sources for humanizing democratic possibilities and explore the relationship between democratic governance and commitments that citizens have to racial solidarities and religious beliefs around the world.
The issue titled “Race, Religion, and Late Democracy” is available to purchase at http://www.sagepub.com/journals/Journal200750?siteId=sage-us&prodTypes=any&q=The+ANNALs.
The introduction written by the co-editors is available free for a limited time at: http://ann.sagepub.com/content/637/1/6.full.pdf+html.
“Race, Religion, and Late Democracy” features the following contributions:
- Introduction: “Democracy’s Anxious Returns” by David Kyuman Kim and John L. Jackson, Jr.
- “‘Look, Baby, We Got Jesus on Our Flag’: Robust Democracy and Religious Debate from the Era of Slavery to the Age of Obama” by Edward Blum
- “Forerunner: The Campaigns and Career of Edward Brooke” by Jason Sokol
- “Iran’s French Revolution: Religion, Philosophy, and Crowds” by Roxanne Varzi
- “Democracy’s New Song: Black Reconstruction in America, 1860� and the Melodramatic Imagination” by Marina Bilbija
- “Habits of the Heart: Youth Religious Participation as Progress, Peril, or Change?” by Monica R. Miller and Ezekiel J. Dixon-Román
- “Populism and Late Liberalism: A Special Affinity?” by Jean Comaroff
- “Chadors, Feminists, Terror: The Racial Politics of U.S. Media Representations of the 1979 Iranian Women’s Movement” by Sylvia Chan-Malik
- “The End of Neoliberalism? What is Left of the Left” by John Comaroff
- “Religion as Race, Recognition as Democracy: Lemba ‘Black Jews’ in South Africa” by Noah Tamarkin
- “The Race toward Caraqueño Citizenship: Negotiating Race, Class, and Participatory Democracy” by Giles Harrison-Conwill
- “The Racialization of Islam in American Law” by Neil Gotanda
For media to receive a copy of any of the articles listed above, please contact Ashley Wrye at ashley.wrye@sagepub.com.
Since 1889, The American Academy of Political and Social Science has served as a forum for the free exchange of ideas among the well informed and intellectually curious. In this era of specialization, few scholarly periodicals cover the scope of societies and politics like The ANNALS. Each volume is guest edited by outstanding scholars and experts in the topics studied and presents more than 200 pages of timely, in-depth research on a significant topic of concern. http://ann.sagepub.com/
SAGE is a leading international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational, and professional markets. Since 1965, SAGE has helped inform and educate a global community of scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students spanning a wide range of subject areas including business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology, and medicine. An independent company, SAGE has principal offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC. www.sagepublications.com
Contact: Ashley Loar
ashley.loar@sagepub.com
SAGE Publications
‘Culturomics 2.0′ forecasts human behavior by supercomputing global news
September 6, 2011
A paper published yesterday in the peer-reviewed journal First Monday combines advanced supercomputing with a quarter-century of worldwide news to forecast and visualize human behavior, from civil unrest to the movement of individuals. The paper, titled “Culturomics 2.0: Forecasting Large-Scale Human Behavior Using Global News Media Tone in Time and Space,” uses the tone and location of news coverage from across the world to forecast country stability (including retroactively predicting the recent Arab Spring), estimate Osama Bin Laden’s final location as a 200-kilometer radius around Abbottabad, and uncover the six world civilizations of the global news media. The research also demonstrates that the news is indeed becoming more negative and even visualizes global human societal conflict and cooperation over the last quarter century.
Using the large shared-memory supercomputer Nautilus, Kalev Leetaru of the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign combined three massive news archives totaling more than 100 million articles worldwide to explore the global consciousness of the news media. The complete New York Times from 1945 to 2005, the unclassified edition of Summary of World Broadcasts from 1979 to 2010, and an archive of English-language Google News articles spanning 2006 to 2011 were used to capture a cross-section of the U.S. media spanning half a century and the global media over a quarter-century.
Advanced tonal, geographic, and network analysis methods were used to produce a network 2.4 petabytes in size containing more than 10 billion people, places, things, and activities connected by over 100 trillion relationships, capturing a cross-section of Earth from the news media. A subset of findings from this analysis were then reproduced for this study using more traditional methods and smaller-scale workflows that offer a model for a new class of digital humanities research that explores how the world views itself.
Funded by the National Science Foundation and managed by the University of Tennessee’s Remote Data Analysis and Visualization Center, the Nautilus supercomputer is a part of the National Institute for Computational Sciences network of advanced computing resources at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Read more about results from this research in the full paper at http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3663/3040. A highlight about the research is also available at www.utk.nics.edu.
About NICS:
The National Institute for Computational Sciences (NICS) is a joint effort of the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. NICS was founded in 2007, and is supported by the National Science Foundation’s Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment program, and is located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, home to the world’s most powerful computing complex.
About RDAV:
RDAV is the University of Tennessee’s Center for Remote Data Analysis and Visualization, sponsored by the National Science Foundation as part of the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment program. RDAV is a partnership between the National Institute for Computational Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of Wisconsin, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois.
Contact: Kalev Leetaru
leetaru@illinois.edu
217-265-7877
National Institute for Computational Sciences
ATS statement regarding White House decision to delay new ozone standard
September 3, 2011
oday, the White House issued a press release stating they would not move to issue a final standard on ozone pollution. The American Thoracic strongly condemns this decision. “This is not change we believe in,” said ATS President-Elect Monica Kraft, MD, professor of medicine and director of the Asthma, Allergy and Airway Center at Duke University.
Ozone, also known as smog, is known to endanger patients with asthma, COPD and other respiratory conditions. Scientific studies have consistently shown that ozone at the current EPA-approved levels leads to missed school days, more emergency room visits and hospitalizations—and even premature death.
“What President Obama has called a ‘regulatory burden’ is what we physicians call a protective health standard,” noted Dr. Kraft.
A number of physician groups have called upon President Obama to issue a stricter ozone standard, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Thoracic Society.
“President Obama’s announcement today represents a big set back for the public’s health,” said Dr. Kraft. “The ATS urges the President to reconsider today’s disappointing decision, and we plan to redouble our efforts to educate and advocate for cleaner air for the benefit of all U.S. citizens.”
Dr. Kraft is available for press interviews. She can be reached through Brian Kell, ATS Communications Director, at 516-305-9251.