TED2009: A bold prediction about Iran

Notes from the 25th annual TED conference in Long Beach, CA.; first posted on www.stltoday.com, my newspaper’s website.

Political scientist Bruce Bueno De Mesquita is exceedingly confident of his ability to predict the future in matters of politics and to prove his point, he offered the final day of the annual TED conference a bold forecast about Iran:

By the end of this year or early 2010, the chances that Iran will build a bomb will decrease significantly. “Iran will make enough weapons grade fuel to show they can, but not enough to actually make a bomb,” said De Mesquita, a professor at New York University. This is not the outcome the United States would prefer, he added, but will be one it can live with.

De Mesquita was one of the final speakers of the four-day conference in Long Beach, Calif. TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, drew some of the world’s leading scholars, technologists, business leaders and a handful of Hollywood celebrities.

How did De Mesquita come to this forecast and why is he so sure of it?

He applies “rationale choice theory,” to situations nvolving persuasion and coercion. It is rooted in game theory, meaning it requires math, and is effective in forecasting situations involving negotiations, such as politics and business, but not the markets, he warns. The CIA has found that this method to be 90 percent accurate, he said.

Rational choice theory is rooted in an assumption that all people are rationally self-interested, “they are just trying to do what they think is in their own best interest,” he said. As an aside, he notes there are two exceptions: two-year-olds and schizophrenics.

The theory factors in the influencers around the person at the top of the ladder. Is not enough to understand what the president wants on a foreign policy issue, for instance, because he is influenced by his secretary of state and she, in turn, is influenced by other advisers.

During his talk Saturday, De Mesquita listed four kinds of information needed to use rational theory successfully:

–Who has a stake in a decision?

–What do they say they want?

–How focused are the on the problem at hand?

–How much clout could they bring to bear if they focused intently on the situation?

He finds this information from a variety of sources, including newspapers and experts, and loads into computer models for analysis.To make his prediction about Iran, De Mesquita analyzed three questions:

- How secure is the Iranian theocracy?

- Where will the nuclear program go?

- Will Ahmedinejad remain in power?

His computer model included 87 Iranian decision makers and public polling data. Virtually no one in Iran wants to test a bomb, he said, and his model’s analysis of the country’s power structure showed that those who do want to test a bomb are fading from power.

TED Curator Chris Anderson signaled a bit of apprehension at the conclusion of De Mesquita’s talk, asking if he had considered the possibility that making a public prediction could change the outcome of a tenuous international situation.

De Mesquita said he had thought about that and hoped that it would hasten Iran’s movement to his prediction conclusion.

TED2009: Bonnie Bassler on talking bacteria

Running notes from the TED conference in Long Beach, CA.; first posted at www.stltoday.com, my newspaper’s website.

Molecular biologist Bonnie Bassler wowed the TED conference today with her lively description of her research that proved bacteria talk with each other.

The annual gathering draws some of the world’s top scientists, scholars, technologists and business leaders who absorb 50-plus talks over four days. TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) organizers pride themselves on assembling an eclectic roster of carefully screened speakers who are working on “big ideas.” This is not a crowd that is easily impressed.

As Bassler concluded her talk, the crowd came to its feet, cheering. “Wow, scientists never get standing ovations,” she said, laughing.

Why the buzz?

Bassler/Photo by Asa Mathat/TED

Bassler, a researcher at Princeton University, detailed a communication process that bacteria use to organize and act, which she calls “quorum sensing.” In 2002, Bassler discovered a molecule that is key to the process in a type of marine bacteria.

The bacteria, called Vibrio Fischer, makes light — but only when it is tightly packed. Bassler discovered that the molecule puts out a chemical signal and once the bacteria has grown to a certain cell size, the molecules collectively begin to glow. She described this as a chemical language, or a form of voting, and said different bacteria use it to carry out hundreds of behaviors.

She zeroed in on virulence. Bad bacteria that enter a human body are individually too small to have an effect. But, using quorum sensing, once they have reached a certain size they release their pathogens at the same time, making a person ill.

Bassler described — in simple terms — how her team has found that each form of bacteria speaks a slightly different language, but all are related. Thus, bacteria communicates not only with “siblings” in the same species, but also with other types of bacteria. With these languages, different types of bacteria can vote on “decisions” about which bacteria should act in a certain situation.

Bassler’s team has developed molecules that “jam” the quorum sensing of certain types of bacteria — rendering them effectively powerless, but not killing them. She believes this holds the key to a new generation of antibiotics to replace current drugs that kill bacteria and, as a result, have led to drug resistant mutations.

“We think this can get us around antibiotic resistance.”

You can read more about Bassler’s work at her lab’s website, and follow the conference’s photo, Twitter and blog feeds here.

TED2009 Prize winners share their wishes

Running notes from the TED conference in Long Beach, CA.; first posted on www.stltoday.com, my newspaper’s webiste.

The three 2009 TED Prize winners were recognized tonight at the organization’s annual conference, picking up $100,000 awards and revealing their “wishes” to change the world.

In addition to the money, the winners receive an array of volunteer help from TED members, who include some of the world’s richest technology entrepreneurs, leading scholars and scientists. This year’s awards ceremony was streamed lived on the TED website and broadcast in a handful of movie theaters around the world.

The winners and their wishes:

Astronomer Jill Tarter, director of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute’s Center for SETI research. Tarter has spent her career looking for signs of sentient life elsewhere in the universe.

Tarter/Photo by TED

She led a decade-long SETI study of 750 star systems, using telescopes around the world. She is on the management board of the Allen Telescope Array, a massive instrument that will be able to increase the speed and spectral range of the hunt for signals of distant technologies that would signal the presence of other intelligent life.

Tarter asked the TED community to help her “empower Earthlings everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company.” She said she intends to use the prize money on efforts to engage and education young people and asked for help with new technologies to aid her search.

Deep ocean explore Sylvia Earle, who has led more than 50 expeditions around the world and was captain of the first all-female team to live underwater. She helped develop undersea vehicles that enable scientists to work at depths that were previously impossible.

In the 1990s, Earle was chief scientist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. She is currently explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society.

Earle/Photo by TED

Earle was introduced by former vice president Al Gore, who praised her efforts to educate people about the affect climate change is having on the oceans.

Earle asked for help to “ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas, hope spots large enough to save and restore the ocean.”

Venezuelan economist and musician José Antonio Abreu, who founded a program that has taught classical music to thousands of poor children in his country. Abreu, who is retired, started the program in 1975 with the goal of providing the children an alternative to drugs and crime.

El Sistema — “the system” — is now a national organization with more than 155 children and youth orchestras and 270 music centers. Almost 250,000 Venezuelan children are involved in the programs.

Abreu/Photo by TED

Several participants have gone on to international careers, including Gustavo Dudamel, 28, the new music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Abreu asked for help create a special training program for 50 young musicians who are committed to developing El Sistema in the United States and other countries.

NOTE: TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, is an annual conference that draws some of the world’s leading scholars, scientists and business and technology figures.

TED2009: Shai Agassi’s electric car dream

Running notes from the TED conference in Long Beach, CA.; first posted on www.stltoday.com, my newspaper’s website.

Shai Agassi has an audacious goal: Transform the United States into an electric car driving nation. Agassi, once a rising star in the technology world, spelled out his vision for accomplishing this at the TED conference Thursday afternoon.

The key, he said, is building electric cars that are affordable and convenient enough that 99 percent of the population can own them. They need to be cars that are as good as those people are driving today.

“Affordable is not a $40,000 car and convenient is not one that you drive for one hour and charge for eight,” Agassi said. “So the question is how do you do that , within the science we have today, within the economy we have today and how do you do it from the consumer up?”

Agassi’s answer: People own the cars, but not the batteries, which are costly and have limited charging life. Under his plan, there would be would be charging stations and battery-swap stations everywhere. “You create the network before the cars show up,” he said.

People basically would buy miles for their cars. “A whole new business model. You’ll pay for miles like you pay for your cell phone,” Agassi said.

He estimates it would cost about eight cents a mile when his start-up company, Better Place, brings the first cars to market in 2010 and will drop to two cents a mile by 2020.

Agassi’s company is working with the governments of Denmark and Israel to build the charging network for such a system. Nissan-Renault has pledged to spend $1.5 billion building the cars. He said he is focusing his efforts to bring the system to the United States on Hawaii and San Francisco.

Agassi, an Israeli entrepreneur and software engineer by training, was on the verge of becoming CEO of the German software giant SAP when he resigned to pursue this project.

You can find details of Agassi’s plan on his website and you can see the TED conference’s blog, photo and Twitter feeds here.

TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, is an annual conference that draws some of the world’s leading scholars, scientists and business and technology figures.

TED2009: Bill Gates on philanthropy

Running notes from the TED conference in Long Beach, CA.; first posted on www.stltoday.com, my newspaper’s website.

Bill Gates gave the opening session of the TED conference today a peek at his new life as a full-time philanthropist, focusing on two of his top priorities: global health and education.

As the CEO and founder of MIcrosoft, Gates had a reputation as a ruthless competitor with a laser focus on his business. In his wide-ranging talk today, Gates seemed relaxed, but no less intent on success.

“I think there are some very important problems that we don’t work on naturally,” because the market does not drive scientists, government and others to focus on them, he said.

He described his foundation’s work to eradicate malaria and the importance of developing good teachers.

His foundation has funded initiatives to improve education for nine years, and experience that convinced him that the key is “making great teachers.”

The foundation set out to determine how much variation there is in teacher quality and found it was “unbelievable,” Gates said. “A top quartile teacher will increase the performance of their class by over 10 percent a year.”

The U.S. education system does not reward these teachers or find ways to transfer their methods to other teachers, he said. “But I’m optimistic,” he added. He briefly listed steps to address the problems, including more systematic measurement of teachers’ performance.

In a brief post-talk interview onstage with TED Curator Chris Anderson, the subject turned to the economy. Gates said he thought it was “good that the mood was bleak” at last week’s annual World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland.

“We’re going through a period of years where a 50-year expansion of credit is contracting,” he said. People should stop expecting that the government to magically change that because that would just delay the economic reckoning, Gates said.

“I know we are going to get past it,” he said. “But I think we have three, four, five years that will be very tough.”

Anderson asked Gates what he wanted his legacy to be, setting off some gentle sparring. “I don’t think anyone optimizes for having a good funeral,” Gates said, prompting Anderson to ask him if the philanthropy is a hobby.
“I’m as engaged in the new work as I’ve been in anything,” Gates responded. “It’s because of the day-to-day activity and the goals. It’s not about legacy.” He said it is fun to work on the problems and “fun when you achieve these ambitious goals. In that sense, it’s magic in the same way software was.”

The full video of Gates’ talk is now posted on the TED site, along with live Twitter and photo feeds from the conference.

NOTE: TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, is an annual conference that draws some of the world’s leading scholars, scientists and business and technology figures. I’ll be posting reports here on some of the 50-plus “talks” an array of speakers are giving at this week’s meeting.