New posts will no longer be published on this site. beyondbrics is a forum for our guest writers to debate the issues, events, opportunities and challenges of the emerging world.. Guidelines for contributors are available here. For data-driven analysis of EM themes, please visit our premium service EM Squared. and read our policy on submitting comments. Chemicals & The Economy with Paul Hodges Trusted Sources - Energy Blog Macro and Markets - Council on Foreign Relations IMF Direct - Emerging Markets All Roads Lead to China Trusted Sources - China Blog The Diplomat: Indian Decade? Economist - Eastern Approaches Emre Deliveli's Blog on the Turkish Economy The Campaign for Boring Development China in Africa today: the real story Latin America - World Affairs BlogWin McNamee / Getty The State of Trump's State Department Anxiety and listless days as a foreign-policy bureaucracy confronts the possibility of radical change
The flags in the lobby of the State Department stood bathed in sunlight and silence on a recent afternoon. “It’s normally so busy here,” marveled a State Department staffer as we stood watching the emptiness. “People are usually coming in for meetings, there’s lots of people, and now it’s so quiet.” The action at Foggy Bottom has instead moved to the State Department cafeteria where, in the absence of work, people linger over countless coffees with colleagues. (“The cafeteria is so crowded all day,” a mid-level State Department officer said, adding that it was a very unusual sight. “No one’s doing anything.”) As the staffer and I walked among the tables and chairs, people with badges chatted over coffee; one was reading his Kindle. The New Preschool Is Crushing Kids Today’s young children are working more, but they’re learning less. Step into an American preschool classroom today and you are likely to be bombarded with what we educators call a print-rich environment, every surface festooned with alphabet charts, bar graphs, word walls, instructional posters, classroom rules, calendars, schedules, and motivational platitudes—few of which a 4-year-old can “decode,” the contemporary word for what used to be known as reading.
Because so few adults can remember the pertinent details of their own preschool or kindergarten years, it can be hard to appreciate just how much the early-education landscape has been transformed over the past two decades. The changes are not restricted to the confusing pastiche on classroom walls. Pedagogy and curricula have changed too, most recently in response to the Common Core State Standards Initiative’s kindergarten guidelines. Much greater portions of the day are now spent on what’s called “seat work” (a term that probably doesn’t need any exposition) and a form of tightly scripted teaching known as direct instruction, formerly used mainly in the older grades, in which a teacher carefully controls the content and pacing of what a child is supposed to learn. Nicole Xu / Spectrum The Hidden Link Between Autism and Addiction It’s believed that people on the spectrum don’t get hooked on alcohol or other drugs. New evidence suggests they do. Shane Stoner’s addiction began in 2008.
He lost a factory job, his parents divorced, his father died—and then a relative introduced him to heroin. “I felt like heroin gave me confidence,” Stoner says. “I could get out of bed in the morning and do the day. No matter what happened, it made me feel like it was going to be all right.” It erased his constant anxiety. Stoner, now 44, eventually entered detox in 2013 after he was arrested for stealing copper from an abandoned house. It was obvious at that point that he was addicted to heroin. But it would take several more years for him to get the diagnosis that truly helped him understand himself: autism. Joshua Roberts / Reuters Why California Is Environmentalists' Trump Card Unique authority granted to the golden state allows it to have a profound impact on emissions regulations. With Scott Pruitt, a close ally of the oil and gas industry, now confirmed as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, environmentalists are bracing for a broad assault on former President Obama’s green legacy, particularly his efforts to reduce the carbon emissions linked to global climate change.
In most of those fights, the only viable recourse for environmentalists is to contest Pruitt in court. (They can’t expect much help from the Republican Congress.) But on the critical issue of requiring auto manufacturers to improve fuel efficiency, green forces have another line of defense: unique authority that Congress granted to California under the Clean Air Act decades ago. Across the many confrontations looming between President Trump and Democratic-leaning local governments on issues from immigration to health care, the impending struggle between the EPA and California over fuel economy may be the one where Democrats most clearly hold a trump card.UCL graduate student Alice Pyne works on a LEGO-based atomic force microscope (Photo: Institute of Making, University College London)Scanning atomic force microscopes, first introduced into commerce in 1989, are a powerful tool for nanoscale science and engineering. Capable of seeing individual atoms, commercial AFM prices range between US$10K and $1M, depending on the unit's features and capabilities.
During the recent LEGO2NANO summer school held at Tsinghua University in Beijing, a group of Chinese and English students succeeded in making a Lego-based AFM in five days at a cost less than $500.LEGO2NANO is the third in a series of China-UK Summer Schools held on the campus of Tsinghua University. Teams of university students from diverse backgrounds spent five days trying to design a sub-$500 atomic force microscope that could be used by Chinese high school students.An atomic force microscope resolves nanoscale details of surface structure (it can even show individual atoms) by contacting the surface with a very thin probe.A schematic of the main components of an atomic force microscope on the left, with an AFM image of a deformed copper surface on which chains of atoms are easily seen (Photo: OverlordQ and Rhynnolomous)Holding the probe against the surface with a constant force, the probe is scanned across the surface. Sensors amplify the vertical movement of the probe as it moves over surface features.
The result is a constant force mapping of the sample surface.The LEGO2NANO teams were challenged to build a functioning scanning atomic force microscope, using only Lego pieces, Arduino microcontrollers, 3D-printed parts and consumer electronics.The winning team took only five days to design and finish a microscope to the level that it successfully demonstrated all the required functions of the challenge, producing a scanned image of nanoscale detail on a sample surface.Their microscope is mounted on a metal plate for stability. Housings and compartments were built from Lego and 3D printed parts. The scanning stage was also 3D printed, and was based on a design pioneered at Bristol University. The scanning stage is moved by piezoelectric actuators that, controlled by Arduino processors, move the stage by a micron for an application of 10 volts, meaning that the smallest possible steps (essentially setting the AFM's resolution) are no more than a few nanometers.The development of the student AFM designs will continue in sessions at the Institute of Making at University College London and at the Open Wisdom Laboratory at Tsinghua University.