Econophysics
By CHRISTOPHER SHEA Published: December 11, 2005
Victor Yakovenko, a physicist at the University of Maryland, happens to think that current patterns of economic inequality are as natural, and unalterable, as the properties of air molecules in your kitchen.
He is a self-described "econophysicist." Econophysics, the use of tools from physics to study markets and similar matters, isn't new, but the subfield devoted to analyzing how the economic pie is split acquired new legitimacy in March when the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, in Calcutta, held an international conference on wealth distribution.
Econophysicists point out that incomes and wealth behave suspiciously like atoms. In the United States, for example, beneath the 97th percentile (roughly $150,000), the dispersion of income fits a common distribution pattern known as "exponential" distribution. Exponential distribution happens to be the distribution pattern of the energy of atoms in gases that are at thermal equilibrium; it's a pattern that many closed, random systems gravitate toward. As for the wealthiest 3 percent, their incomes follow what's called a "power law": there is a very long tail in the distribution of data. (Consider the huge gap between a lawyer making $200,000 and Bill Gates.)
Other developed nations seem to display this two-tiered economic system as well, with the demarcation lines differing only slightly.
Try this one:
Embryo Adoption
By SARAH BLUSTAIN Published: December 11, 2005
This year, opponents of abortion stepped up their use of a carefully chosen phrase - "embryo adoption" - that describes a couples' decision to have a baby using the embryos of another couple.
The less loaded term for embryo adoption is "embryo donation." It typically signifies that a couple who have undergone in vitro fertilization, and have had as many children as they wish to, are releasing their leftover embryos for use by other would-be parents. Of some 400,000 frozen embryos in the country, according to the RAND Corporation, about 9,000 are designated for other families. (Another 11,000 are designated for research, while the balance remain unused in freezers.)
Medically, embryo adoption and embryo donation are identical. But to promoters of embryo adoption, which term you use makes all the difference: "We would like for embryos to be recognized as human life and therefore to be adopted as opposed to treated as property," explains Kathryn Deiters, director of development at the Nightlight Christian Adoptions agency, in California, which has been offering embryo adoptions since the late 1990's. Nightlight also favors the term "snowflakes." As the agency's executive director, Ron Stoddart, told The Washington Times: "Like snowflakes, these embryos are unique, they're fragile and, of course, they're frozen.. . .It's a perfect analogy."
In May, President Bush delighted the Nightlight agency when he met with some of its young success stories, who wore "Former Embryo" stickers on their chests. He used the occasion to stress his opposition to legislation supporting wider stem-cell research with embryos.