Author: SeniorWomenWeb

Maryam Mirzakhani: “It’s like solving a puzzle or connecting the dots in a detective case”

By Bjorn Carey

Maryam Mirzakhani, a professor of mathematics at Stanford, has been awarded the 2014 Fields Medal, the most prestigious honor in mathematics. Mirzakhani is the first woman to win the prize, widely regarded as the “Nobel Prize of mathematics,” since it was established in 1936.

(Photo courtesy of Maryam Mirzakhani)

“This is a great honor. I will be happy if it encourages young female scientists and mathematicians,” Mirzakhani said. “I am sure there will be many more women winning this kind of award in coming years.”

Officially known as the International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, the Fields Medal has been presented by the International Mathematical Union at the International Congress of Mathematicians, held this year in Seoul, South Korea. Mirzakhani is the first Stanford recipient to win this honor since Paul Cohen in 1966.

The award recognizes Mirzakhani’s sophisticated and highly original contributions to the fields of geometry and dynamical systems, particularly in understanding the symmetry of curved surfaces, such as spheres, the surfaces of doughnuts and of hyperbolic objects. Although her work is considered “pure mathematics” and is mostly theoretical, it has implications for physics and quantum field theory.

“On behalf of the entire Stanford community, I congratulate Maryam on this incredible recognition, the highest honor in her discipline, the first ever granted to a woman,” said Stanford President John Hennessy. “We are proud of her achievements, and of the work taking place in our math department and among our faculty. We hope it will serve as an inspiration to many aspiring mathematicians.”

Mirzakhani was born and raised in Tehran, Iran. As a young girl she dreamed of becoming a writer. By high school, however, her affinity for solving mathematical problems and working on proofs had shifted her sights.

“It is fun — it’s like solving a puzzle or connecting the dots in a detective case,” she said. “I felt that this was something I could do, and I wanted to pursue this path.”

Mirzakhani became known to the international math scene as a teenager, winning gold medals at both the 1994 and 1995 International Math Olympiads – she finished with a perfect score in the latter competition. Mathematicians who would later be her mentors and colleagues followed the mathematical proofs she developed as an undergraduate.

After earning her bachelor’s degree from Sharif University of Technology in 1999, she began work on her doctorate at Harvard University under the guidance of Fields Medal recipient Curtis McMullen. She possesses a remarkable fluency in a diverse range of mathematical techniques and disparate mathematical cultures – including algebra, calculus, complex analysis and hyperbolic geometry. By borrowing principles from several fields, she has brought a new level of understanding to an area of mathematics called low dimensional topology.

Mirzakhani’s earliest work involved solving the decades-old problem of calculating the volumes of moduli spaces of curves on objects known as Riemann surfaces. These are geometric objects whose points each represent a different hyperbolic surface. These objects are mostly theoretical, but real-world examples include amoebae and doughnuts. She solved this by drawing a series of loops across their surfaces and calculating their lengths.

August 13, 2014
A Scaffold of Silk Protein: Tufts Bioengineers Create Functional 3D Brain-like Tissue

Bioengineers have created three-dimensional brain-like tissue that functions like and has structural features similar to tissue in the rat brain and that can be kept alive in the lab for more than two months.

Confocal microscope image of neurons (greenish yellow) attached to silk-based scaffold (blue). The neurons formed functional networks throughout the scaffold pores (dark areas). Image courtesy of Tufts University.

As a first demonstration of its potential, researchers used the brain-like tissue to study chemical and electrical changes that occur immediately following traumatic brain injury and, in a separate experiment, changes that occur in response to a drug. The tissue could provide a superior model for studying normal brain function as well as injury and disease, and could assist in the development of new treatments for brain dysfunction.

The brain-like tissue was developed at the Tissue Engineering Resource Center at Tufts University, Boston, which is funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) to establish innovative biomaterials and tissue engineering models. David Kaplan, Ph.D., Stern Family Professor of Engineering at Tufts University is director of the center and led the research efforts to develop the tissue.

Currently, scientists grow neurons in petri dishes to study their behavior in a controllable environment. Yet neurons grown in two dimensions are unable to replicate the complex structural organization of brain tissue, which consists of segregated regions of grey and white matter. In the brain, grey matter is comprised primarily of neuron cell bodies, while white matter is made up of bundles of axons, which are the projections neurons send out to connect with one another. Because brain injuries and diseases often affect these areas differently, models are needed that exhibit grey and white matter compartmentalization.

Recently, tissue engineers have attempted to grow neurons in 3D gel environments, where they can freely establish connections in all directions. Yet these gel-based tissue models don’t live long and fail to yield robust, tissue-level function. This is because the extracellular environment is a complex matrix in which local signals establish different neighborhoods that encourage distinct cell growth and/or development and function. Simply providing the space for neurons to grow in three dimensions is not sufficient.

Diagram of scaffold donut showing grey-white matter compartmentalization. Rat neurons attached to the scaffold (donut ring) and also sent axons (labeled with green fluorescence) through the collagen gel-filled center.

Now, in the Aug. 11th early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a group of bioengineers report that they have successfully created functional 3D brain-like tissue that exhibits grey-white matter compartmentalization and can survive in the lab for more than two months.

“This work is an exceptional feat,” said Rosemarie Hunziker, Ph.D., program director of Tissue Engineering at NIBIB. “It combines a deep understand of brain physiology with a large and growing suite of bioengineering tools to create an environment that is both necessary and sufficient to mimic brain function.”

The key to generating the brain-like tissue was the creation of a novel composite structure that consisted of two biomaterials with different physical properties: a spongy scaffold made out of silk protein and a softer, collagen-based gel. The scaffold served as a structure onto which neurons could anchor themselves, and the gel encouraged axons to grow through it.

August 11, 2014
The Paris of Toulouse-Lautrec at the MoMA: Women From All Walks of Life

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901). Jane Avril. 1899. Lithograph, sheet: 22 1/16 x 15 in. (56 x 38.1 cm) The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, 1946

The Museum of Modern Art presents The Paris of Toulouse-Lautrec: Prints and Posters, an exhibition dedicated to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and drawn almost exclusively from MoMA’s collection of posters, lithographs, printed ephemera, and illustrated books, on view to March 22, 2015. The exhibition is displayed in the Paul J. Sachs Prints and Illustrated Books Galleries, second floor.

A preeminent artist of Belle Époque Paris, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) brought the language of the late-19th- century avant-garde to a broad public through his famous posters, prints, and illustrations for journals and magazines. His work allows entry into many facets of Parisian life, from politics to the rise of popular entertainment in the form of cabarets and café-concerts.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901). La Loge au mascaron doré (The Box With the Gilded Mask), program for Le Missionnaire (The Missionary) at the Théâtre Libre. 1894. Lithograph, sheet: 12 1/16 x 9 7/16 in. (30.6 x 24 cm) The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Johanna and Leslie J. Garfield Fund, Mary Ellen Oldenburg Fund, and Sharon P. Rockefeller Fund, 2008

Organized thematically, the exhibition explores five subjects that together create a portrait of Lautrec’s Paris: café-concerts and dance halls; actors, singers, dancers, and performers; his sensitive depictions of women from all walks of life, including his landmark portfolio Elles, depicting prostitutes during nonworking hours; his creative circle, highlighting designs for song sheets for popular music, programs for avant-garde theatrical productions, and his contributions to magazines and intellectual reviews; and the pleasures of the capital. The exhibition features over 100 examples of the best-known works created during the apex of his career. The Paris of Toulouse-Lautrec: Prints and Posters is organized by Sarah Suzuki, Associate Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, MoMA.

Lautrec made the venues and performers of late-19th-century Paris famous through his posters and prints, and in turn, it was his work for them that brought him the greatest acclaim. Among those in Lautrec’s spotlight were the dancer *La Goulue (born Louise Weber), featured in several lithographs, including La Goulue (1894) and Au Moulin Rouge, La Goulue et sa Soeur (1892), that reference Lautrec’s debt to depictions of actors in 18th-century Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts. As in the Japanese prints, Lautrec often uses signs and symbols — a specific gesture, an accessory or accoutrement, a hairstyle — rather than a portrait likeness to indicate his subject. Other performers featured include Cha-U-Kao, the Moulin Rouge clown whose name and costume were inspired by Japanese motifs — depicted in La Clownesse au Moulin Rouge (1897) and La Danse au Moulin Rouge (1897) — and May Milton, an Irish actress who had come to Paris with a British dance troupe and who is often marked by her pug nose and a peculiar kind of hat, as depicted on the cover of the song sheet Eros vanné (1894).

August 8, 2014
Violence Against Women Act Next Steps: A Judiciary Hearing at the Request of Gabrielle Giffords

Member Statements and Testimony Excerpts

Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat (VT)

Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee, Hearing on “VAWA Next Steps: Protecting Women From Gun Violence”July 30, 2014

Former US Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Americans for Responsible Solutions

“Today the Senate Judiciary Committee returns to a question that we started this Congress with: What can we do to further reduce the scourge of violence against women in this country? I was proud that the President signed into law the Leahy-Crapo Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act in June of last year. That law took important new steps to support all victims of domestic and sexual violence, regardless of their immigration status, their sexual orientation, or their membership in an Indian tribe. After only a year, the law has already made our communities safer. It has improved protections for women, whether in their home, on a college campus, or at their job.

“But we know that ending violence against women is not an easy problem to solve, and there is, of course, more to do. Last May I discussed the disturbing relationship between domestic violence and gun violence with former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords – a powerful advocate for common sense reforms. I was happy to accommodate her request for the Judiciary Committee to hold this important hearing. Violence against women comes in all forms, and there is a clear and deadly connection between domestic violence and gun violence.

“In my home state of Vermont – a peaceful state that enjoys a very low crime rate overall – we are tragically all too aware of that connection. In Vermont, a majority of all homicides involve intimate partner or family violence. This amounts to one of the highest intimate partner homicide rates in the country. And according to FBI data from 2000-2012, 56 percent of women shot to death in Vermont were killed by intimate partners. Of those women, 50 percent were shot to death by dating partners. This is simply unacceptable.

“Today we will hear from those who are working hard to reduce this devastating violence and I look forward to hearing their testimony on what we can do. We know that some common sense steps can make it more difficult for abusers to access guns and those steps can save lives.

“Today, convicted domestic abusers can too easily skirt criminal background checks to illegally purchase firearms. For example, they can obtain firearms through intermediaries known as straw purchasers. Other abusers are able to lawfully purchase firearms because they were convicted of stalking or crimes involving dating violence, which are not covered by existing law. Abusers exploit these loopholes, too often with deadly results.

“For decades I have worked side by side with survivors of domestic and sexual violence and the professionals who support them every day. I have heard many heartbreaking stories of the horrors of domestic violence – most recently on Monday while I visited the Women Helping Battered Women facility in Burlington, Vermont. The bravery and sheer resiliency of survivors is inspiring. They are among the most courageous people I have ever met.

“It is long past time for the Senate to muster its own courage. Last year I challenged my fellow Senators to come forward, to work together and build consensus around solutions to gun violence. Some did. I hope that those who did not will listen today. Protecting women from gun violence should not be a partisan issue. We should all agree that keeping firearms out of the hands of domestic abusers will save lives, and for that reason alone it is worth pursuing.”

Witnesses

On July 30, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing, Violence Against Women Act Next Steps: Protecting Women from Gun Violence, chaired by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). The hearing focused on two bills addressing domestic gun violence: the Protecting Domestic Violence and Stalking Victims Act (S. 1290), sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and the Lori Jackson Domestic Violence Survivor Protection Act (S. 2483), sponsored by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).

August 7, 2014
Exploring Relationships and Social Networks: Marriage Satisfaction and Divorce

Could Facebook Use End a Marriage? COM study: social media use tied to reduced marital satisfaction, divorce rate

By Amy Laskowski

It turns out that spending countless hours talking to friends in front of a screen can negatively affect your most important relationship — the one with your spouse.

A new study conducted by James E. Katz, the Feld Family Professor of Emerging Media Studies at the College of Communication and director of [Boston University’s College of Communication’s] Division of Emerging Media Studies, and two other researchers found a correlation between using social network sites (like Facebook), spousal troubles, and the divorce rate. Titled Social network sites, marriage well-being, and divorce: Survey and state-level evidence from the United States, the study was recently published online in Computers in Human Behavior. The authors say their findings show that heavy use of social networks — specifically Facebook — is “a positive, significant predictor of divorce rate and spousal troubles” in the United States.

Katz coauthored the study with Sebastian Valenzuela and Daniel Halpern, professors from Pontifical Catholic University of Chile’s School of Communications.

“The study looked at data to understand human behavior as it’s affected by communication technology, especially technologies that are mobile-based,” says Katz, who is also director of BU’s Center for Mobile Communication Studies. “We believe being aware of this situation will empower Facebook users to better understand the implications of their activities and then allow them to make much more informed decisions.”

To conduct their study, the researchers first looked at data from married individuals collected between 2008 and 2010. They compared divorce rates across 43 states with Facebook penetration — the number of Facebook accounts in each state — divided by the total population. They found that a 20 percent increase in Facebook users in a state could be linked to a 2.18 percent growth in the divorce rate. Even when researchers factored in variables such as employment status, age, and race, the correlation remained constant. While the finding shouldn’t necessarily be “interpreted as a causal effect,” they wrote, it could be a “significant predictor of divorce rates.”

Noting that further studies were needed using individual level data, the researchers next examined data from 1,160 married people collected in a 2011 University of Texas at Austin study that had polled married 18- to 39-year-olds on questions designed to measure the quality of their romantic relationship. The poll asked respondents how happy they were in the relationship, whether their parents were divorced, and if extramarital sex existed in the relationship.

On this individual level, non–social network users reported being 11.4 percent happier with their marriage than heavy social media users. And heavy social media users were 32 percent more likely to think about leaving their spouse, compared with 16 percent for a nonuser.

While Katz describes the two separate findings as startling, he says it makes sense that people who are unhappy in their marriage would turn to Facebook to find other people, adding that even the opportunity for meeting new people may help precipitate discontent with a marriage. Facebook has actually capitalized on this by “recommending” friends and groups for users. In this way, individuals may turn to Facebook more frequently for social support, the study says.

“The apparent association between the use of Facebook and other social networking sites and divorce and marital unhappiness in the United States raises troubling questions not only about how we use these tools, but how their use affects marriage,” Katz says. “The institution of marriage, already under siege in many quarters, seems to be facing yet further assault from people’s growing enthrallment with social media.”

Abstract

This study explores the relationship between using social networks sites (SNS), marriage satisfaction and divorce rates using survey data of married individuals and state-level data from the United States. Results show that using SNS is negatively correlated with marriage quality and happiness, and positively correlated with experiencing a troubled relationship and thinking about divorce. These correlations hold after a variety of economic, demographic, and psychological variables related to marriage well-being are taken into account. Further, the findings of this individual-level analysis are consistent with a state-level analysis of the most popular SNS to date: across the US, the diffusion of Facebook between 2008 and 2010 is positively correlated with increasing divorce rates during the same time period after controlling for all time-invariant factors of each state (fixed effects), and continues to hold when time-varying economic and socio-demographic factors that might affect divorce rates are also controlled. Possible explanations for these associations are discussed, particularly in the context of pro- and anti-social perspectives towards SNS and Facebook in particular.

August 6, 2014
Defining Powerhouse Fruits and Vegetables: A Nutrient Density Approach

Editor’s Note: In addition to the information below, The Center for Science in the Public Interest has created an article, Going Organic: What’s the Payoff? that might be interesting for the consumer and shopper. Page 4 of the article has a box, Scoring Pesticides. The article below is from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC.

Jennifer Di Noia, PhD

Fragaria vesca L.jpg, Atlas des plantes de France. 1891. Wikimedia Commons

Abstract

National nutrition guidelines emphasize consumption of powerhouse fruits and vegetables (PFV), foods most strongly associated with reduced chronic disease risk; yet efforts to define PFV are lacking. This study developed and validated a classification scheme defining PFV as foods providing, on average, 10% or more daily value per 100 kcal of 17 qualifying nutrients. Of 47 foods studied, 41 satisfied the powerhouse criterion and were more nutrient-dense than were non-PFV, providing preliminary evidence of the validity of the classification scheme. The proposed classification scheme is offered as a tool for nutrition education and dietary guidance.

Top of Page

Objective

Powerhouse fruits and vegetables (PFV), foods most strongly associated with reduced chronic disease risk, are described as green leafy, yellow/orange, citrus, and cruciferous items, but a clear definition of PFV is lacking (1). Defining PFV on the basis of nutrient and phytochemical constituents is suggested (1). However, uniform data on food phytochemicals and corresponding intake recommendations are lacking (2). This article describes a classification scheme defining PFV on the basis of 17 nutrients of public health importance per the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and Institute of Medicine (ie, potassium, fiber, protein, calcium, iron, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, folate, zinc, and vitamins A, B₆, B₁₂, C, D, E, and K) (3).

Top of Page

Methods

This cross-sectional study identified PFV in a 3-step process. First, a tentative list of PFV consisting of green leafy, yellow/orange, citrus, and cruciferous items was generated on the basis of scientific literature (4,5) and consumer guidelines (6,7). Berry fruits and allium vegetables were added in light of their associations with reduced risks for cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases and some cancers (8). For each, and for 4 items (apples, bananas, corn, and potatoes) described elsewhere as low-nutrient-dense (1), information was collected in February 2014 on amounts of the 17 nutrients and kilocalories per 100 g of food (9). Because preparation methods can alter the nutrient content of foods (2), nutrient data were for the items in raw form.

August 4, 2014
Celebrating a New Clark Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), Fumée d’ambre gris (Smoke of Ambergris), 1880. Oil on canvas. Clark Art Institute, 1955

On August 2, the Clark celebrated the opening of Make It New: Abstract Painting from the National Gallery of Art, 1950–1975 in the Visitor Center’s new special exhibition galleries. Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, in collaboration with the Clark, Make It New examines the different paths taken by abstract painting in the first quarter-century of the postwar period, cutting across geographies and narrow timeframes as it evocatively engages Tadao Ando’s architecture. The exhibition presents Abstract Expressionist and color field masterpieces alongside other canonical works organized by the formal categories of pattern, texture, and shape. Featuring key works such as Jackson Pollock’s Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), Mark Rothko’s No. 1 (1961), and Lee Bontecou’s Untitled (1962), Make It New also includes paintings by Jean Dubuffet, Jasper Johns, Yayoi Kusama, Robert Ryman, and Cy Twombly. Make It New will be on view through October 13, 2014.

The Clark’s new Visitor Center, designed by Tadao Ando Architect & Associates, Osaka, Japan, features more than 11,000 square feet of special exhibition space, with galleries on two floors. A new Museum Store, café, and the main admissions desk are also housed in the glass, concrete, and granite building. Indoor and outdoor walkways connect the Visitor Center to the original Museum Building, which has been newly reconceived by Selldorf Architects, New York with renovated and expanded gallery spaces that increase overall gallery space by fifteen percent. A one-acre tiered reflecting pool is the focal point of a dramatic landscape design conceived by Reed Hilderbrand, Cambridge, Massachusetts, which unites the architecture with the 140-acre campus. The landscape design expands the Clark’s walking trails and provides new opportunities to view the spectacular Green Mountain and Taconic ranges that surround the campus.

The Clark’s noted permanent collection has been reinstalled in the Museum Building, which features new gallery spaces for American paintings and European sculpture and decorative arts. Seventy-three of the Clark’s French paintings have returned to the Institute following a three-year international tour to eleven cities that drew more than 2.6 million visitors worldwide.

August 3, 2014

For Weekends, the Dark of Night and Beyond: Project Gutenberg’s Best Books Ever Listings

Woman in an unknown library, Wikimedia Commons

Editor’s Note: Our favorite book about storage is Bookshelf by Alex Johnson, published by Thames & Hudson, with 305 color illustrations: “Bookshelves today are no longer just somewhere to store books. They are modern art, engineering experiments and — just as they were for Samuel Pepys 350 years ago — status symbols. … Justin Pollard, in his 2010 book, Boffinology: The Real Stories Behind Our Greatest Scientific Discoveries, suggests that the idea of the bookwheel (a device that allowed the user to flick between pages of information) was a forerunner of the Internet.“

Once you run out of space for bookshelves in cases, there’s always the Staircase pictured on page 164: “Architects Levitate constructed tis staircase in a London flat, where space limitations, coupled with the client’s goal of building a library, led to the reation of an innovative library staircase that holds around two thousand books. (Editor’s Note: If truth be told, however, we spy that there are many Penquin editions within that number.) The staircase was designed by structural engineers Rodrigues Associates to transfer te weight of the stairs and books back to the main walls of the building. It dangles from the upper floor, thereby avkooiding any complicated issues with neighbours living below.”

After having purchased three biblioteques ourselves in New York City (ABC Home) and Westport, CT to help house our books, we bought a step tansu in San Francisco. Still, I dream of other designs and this book lays out an intriguing number of fanciful and practical choices to choose from. Now, to set my husband to work …

1 Norwegian Book Clubs in Oslo (2002)

Norwegian Book Clubs in Oslo (2002)

In 2002, the editors of The Norwegian Book Clubs asked 100 authors to nominate ten books that, in their opinion, are the ten best and most central works in world literature. This list was reprinted in The Guardian in 2002. Here’s the list.

Don Quixote (English) by Miguel de Cervantes
Don Quixote (English)
Don Quixote, Volume 1 , Volume 2 (English)
Don Quixote (English)
Don Quixote (English)
Don Quixote (English) (read by computer voice)
Don Quixote, Volume 1 (English) (read by Chip, Sara Schein, Anita Roy Dobbs, Kelly Bescherer, Denny Sayers, Kirsten Ferreri, Cynthia Lyons, Gesine, Kathleen Dang, Marian Brown, Zachary Brewster-Geisz, Robert Foster, Joplin James, Lizzie Driver, Andy Minter, and Katy Preston)
Don Quijote (Spanish)
Don Quichot (Dutch)
Don Quichotte, Tome 1 , Tome 2 (French)
L’ingénieux chevalier Don Quichotte de la Manche illustrated by G. Roux (French)
Fairy tales and stories by Hans Christian Andersen
Project Gutenberg also has other versions and translations of Andersen’s fairy tales.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice (read by Annie Coleman)
Pride and Prejudice (read by Chris Goringe, Kara Shallenberg, Kristen McQuillin, suburbanbanshee, Gord Mackenzie, Sureka Goringe, Mark Bradford, Annie Coleman, Elisabeth Shields, Sherry Crowther, PenelopePitstop, Gesine, Eileen aka e, and ajikan81)
Pride and Prejudice (read by Karen Savage)
Old Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
The Decameron (English) by Giovanni Boccaccio
The Decameron, Volume 1 , Volume 2 (English)
De Decamerone (Dutch)
Collected fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

August 1, 2014

Overdrawing Your Account? Small Debit Purchases Lead to Expensive Overdraft Charges

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released a report that raises concerns about the impact of opting in to overdraft services for debit card and ATM transactions. The study found that the majority of debit card overdraft fees are incurred on transactions of $24 or less and that the majority of overdrafts are repaid within three days. Put in lending terms, if a consumer borrowed $24 for three days and paid the median overdraft fee of $34, such a loan would carry a 17,000 percent annual percentage rate (APR).

Chase Bank ATM machine at CVS Store, Wikimedia Commons

“Today’s report shows that consumers who opt in to overdraft coverage put themselves at serious risk when they use their debit card,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “Despite recent regulatory and industry changes, overdrafts continue to impose heavy costs on consumers who have low account balances and no cushion for error. Overdraft fees should not be ‘gotchas’ when people use their debit cards.”

The Overdraft Data Point is available at: http://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201407_cfpb_report_data-point_overdrafts.pdf

An overdraft occurs when a consumer doesn’t have enough money in his or her checking account to cover a transaction, but the bank or credit union pays the transaction anyway. This practice can provide consumers with needed access to funds. Financial institutions typically charge a high fee for this service in addition to requiring repayment of the deficit in the account. A consumer can overdraw his or her account through checks, ATM transactions, debit card purchases, automatic bill payments, or direct debits from lenders or other billers.

In 2010, federal regulators put in place a new “opt in” requirement that depository institutions obtain a consumer’s consent before charging fees for allowing overdrafts on most ATM and debit card transactions. Opting in for overdraft coverage does not apply to checks or automated payments, known as Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments. For these, the bank can choose to not cover the transaction and reject the check or automated payment; this usually results in a non-sufficient funds (NSF) fee. Or, if the bank chooses to cover the difference, it can charge the consumer an overdraft fee – regardless of whether that consumer opted in for the debit card coverage.

In addition to the regulatory changes, financial institutions have also updated their overdraft policies in recent years. For example, some banks and credit unions do not charge an overdraft fee if the consumer is only overdrawing on his or her account by a small amount, such as $5. Some institutions also cap the number of overdraft and NSF fees they will charge on an account on a single day.

Today’s study raises concerns that despite these recent changes, a small number of consumers are paying large amounts for overdraft, often for advances of small amounts of money for short periods of time. Today’s report finds that among the banks in the study, overdraft and NSF fees represent more than half of the fee income on consumer checking accounts. The study found that about 8 percent of accounts incur the vast majority of overdraft fees.

Specifically, the report found:

· Consumers use debit cards nearly three times more than writing checks or paying bills online: The most common way consumers access money in their accounts is through debit card transactions. The study found that consumers use their debit cards for purchases about 17 times a month; in comparison, consumers, on average, write checks fewer than three times per month, and they make automatic bill payments a little more than three times per month. Consumers who are opted in for overdraft services use their debit cards even more frequently, at 24 times per month. The wide use of debit cards can mean more fees for those who opt in for overdraft.

July 31, 2014
Watching Schrodinger’s Cat Die: “Gently recording the cat’s paw prints both makes it die, or come to life”

By Robert Sanders

One of the famous examples of the weirdness of quantum mechanics is the paradox of *Schrödinger’s cat.

In the Schrodinger’s cat paradox, a cat is both dead and alive until someone opens the box to find out. UC Berkeley physicists show you can actually probe the cat’s state continually until the final result is revealed. Illustration, Wikipedia.

If you put a cat inside an opaque box and make his life dependent on a random event, when does the cat die? When the random event occurs, or when you open the box?

Though common sense suggests the former, quantum mechanics — or at least the most common “Copenhagen” interpretation enunciated by Danish physicist Neils Bohr in the 1920s — says it’s the latter. Someone has to observe the result before it becomes final. Until then, paradoxically, the cat is both dead and alive at the same time.

UC Berkeley physicists have for the first time showed that, in fact, it’s possible to follow the metaphorical cat through the whole process, whether he lives or dies in the end.

“Gently recording the cat’s paw prints both makes it die, or come to life, as the case may be, and allows us to reconstruct its life history,” said Irfan Siddiqi, UC Berkeley associate professor of physics, who is senior author of a cover article describing the result in the July 31 issue of the journal Nature.

The Schrödinger’s cat paradox is a critical issue in quantum computers, where the input is an entanglement of states — like the cat’s entangled life and death — yet the answer to whether the animal is dead or alive has to be definite.

“To Bohr and others, the process was instantaneous — when you opened the box, the entangled system collapsed into a definite, classical state. This postulate stirred debate in quantum mechanics,” Siddiqi said. “But real-time tracking of a quantum system shows that it’s a continuous process, and that we can constantly extract information from the system as it goes from quantum to classical. This level of detail was never considered accessible by the original founders of quantum theory.”

For quantum computers, this would allow continuous error correction. The real world, everything from light and heat to vibration, can knock a quantum system out of its quantum state into a real-world, so-called classical state, like opening the box to look at the cat and forcing it to be either dead or alive. A big question regarding quantum computers, Siddiqi said, is whether you can extract information without destroying the quantum system entirely.

“This gets around that fundamental problem in a very natural way,” he said. “We can continuously probe a system very gently to get a little bit of information and continuously correct it, nudging it back into line, toward the ultimate goal.”

*Editor’s Note, from Erwin Schrödinger’s 1935 essay:

“A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following diabolical device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of one hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The first atomic decay would have poisoned it. The Psi function for the entire system would express this by having in it the living and the dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.”

July 30, 2014

Author: SeniorWomenWeb

Member Statements and Testimony Excerpts

Witnesses

Abstract

Jennifer Di Noia, PhD

Abstract

Objective

Methods

Contents

Norwegian Book Clubs in Oslo (2002)