Potenonomics
Discovery opens up new avenue for research on potential treatments for Alzheimer's disease
News Medical Net
November 27, 2015
A team of researchers led by UNSW Australia scientists has discovered how connections between brain cells are destroyed in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease - work that opens up a new avenue for research on possible treatments for the degenerative brain condition.[1]
"One of the first signs of Alzheimer's disease is the loss of synapses - the structures that connect neurons in the brain," says study leader, Dr Vladimir Sytnyk, of the UNSW School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences.[1]
"Synapses are required for all brain functions, and particularly for learning and forming memories. In Alzheimer's disease, this loss of synapses occurs very early on, when people still only have mild cognitive impairment, and long before the nerve cells themselves die.[1]
"We have identified a new molecular mechanism which directly contributes to this synapse loss - a discovery we hope could eventually lead to earlier diagnosis of the disease and new treatments."[1]
The team studied a protein in the brain called neural cell adhesion molecule 2, or NCAM2 - one of a family of molecules that physically connects the membranes of synapses and help stabilise these long lasting synaptic contacts between neurons.[1]
The research is published in the journal Nature Communications.Using post-mortem brain tissue from people with and without the condition, they discovered that synaptic NCAM2 levels in the part of the brain known as the hippocampus were low in those with Alzheimer's disease.[1]
They also showed in mice studies and in the laboratory that NCAM2 was broken down by another protein called beta-amyloid, which is the main component of the plaques that build up in the brains of people with the disease.[1]
"Our research shows the loss of synapses is linked to the loss of NCAM2 as a result of the toxic effects of beta-amyloid," says Dr Sytnyk."It opens up a new avenue for research on possible treatments that can prevent the destruction of NCAM2 in the brain."[1]
What Is a Steady State Economy?
Steadystate. org
steady state economy is a truly green economy. It aims for stable population and stable consumption of energy and materials at sustainable levels.[2]
A steady state economy features relatively stable size. It is ideally established at a size that leaves room for nature and provides high levels of human wellbeing.[2]
The term typically refers to a national economy, but it can also be applied to the economy of a city, region, or the entire planet. The size of an economy is generally determined by multiplying population by the amount that each person consumes. This quantity in a steady state economy neither grows nor contracts from year to year.[2]
Herman Daly, the dean of ecological economics, defines a steady state economy as...
"an economy with constant stocks of people and artifacts, maintained at some desired, sufficient levels by low rates of maintenance throughput, that is, by the lowest feasible flows of matter and energy from the first stage of production to the last stage of consumption."[2]
So a steady state economy aims for stability or mildly fluctuating levels in population and consumption of energy and materials.[2]
Just like in the forest, stability in a steady state economy is very different from stagnation. Ecological economists actually call this kind of stability a dynamic equilibrium. [2]
This fancy term means that a steady state economy is dynamic – it changes and develops over time, but it remains balanced with the natural environment. The idea is to right-size the economy, to find the Goldilocks size that’s not too small and not too big, but just right.[2]
A steady state economy is the only type of economy that is sustainable over the long term. It is an economy that meets people’s needs without undermining the life-support services of the planet. [2]
It represents the ultimate social movement toward a better world for all. Life is downshifted as overconsumption, congestion, sprawl, and unfair trade practices fade away. People instead focus on community, relationships, sufficient consumption, and the things that really matter in life.[2]
John Stuart Mill, pioneer of economics and one of the most gifted philosophers and scholars of the 19th century, anticipated the transition from growth to a "stationary state."[2]
In his magnum opus, he wrote:
…the increase of wealth is not boundless. The end of growth leads to a stationary state. The stationary state of capital and wealth… would be a very considerable improvement on our present condition.[2]
…a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement.
There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the art of living, and much more likelihood of it being improved, when minds ceased to be engrossed by the art of getting on.[2]
Our current economy is structured for growth. When consumption slows in a growth economy, recession ensues. But a steady state economy is precisely and intentionally structured for stability. It's the stability that provides a good life for citizens and eliminates turbulent boom/bust cycles.[2]
Economic growth has not eradicated poverty. The condition of having a stable and sustainable population in a steady state economy allows more resources per person.[2]
To Balance Growth With Environmental Integrity
Investopedia
An economy structured to balance growth with environmental integrity. A steady state economy seeks to find an equilibrium between production growth and population growth. The economy aims for the efficient use of natural resources, but also seeks fair distribution of the wealth generated from the development of those resources.[3]
The possibility of a steady state economy comes down to balance: economies may grow or contract, but ultimately fight back to an equilibrium.[3]
Ecological economists - major supporters of the idea of a steady state economy - posit that the environment cannot support an unlimited growth of production and wealth, since a growing population will eventually push down wages and use up an increasingly scarce base of natural resources.[3]
Thermodynamic Roots of Economics
Herman Daly
The first and second laws of thermodynamics should also be called the first and second laws of economics. Why?[4]
Because without them there would be no scarcity, and without scarcity, no economics. Consider the first law: if we could create useful energy and matter as we needed it, as well as destroy waste matter and energy as it got in our way, we would have superabundant sources and sinks, no depletion, no pollution, more of everything we want without having to find a place for stuff we don’t want. [4]
The first law rules out this direct abolition of scarcity. But consider the second law: even without creation and destruction of matter-energy, we might indirectly abolish scarcity if only we could use the same matter-energy over and over again for the same purposes — perfect recycling. But the second law rules that out.[4]
And if one thinks that time is the ultimate scarce resource, well, the entropy law is time’s irreversible arrow in the physical world. So it is that scarcity and economics have deep roots in the physical world, as well as deep psychic roots in our wants and desires.[4]
Michio Kaku and Morgan Freeman
Explain Entropy
Economists have paid much attention to the psychic roots of value (e.g., diminishing marginal utility), but not so much to the physical roots. [4]
Generally they have assumed that the biophysical world is so large relative to its economic subsystem that the physical constraints (the laws of thermodynamics and ecological interdependence) are not binding.[4]
But they are always binding to some degree and become very limiting as the scale of the economy becomes large relative to the containing biophysical system. [4]
Therefore attention to thermodynamic constraints on the economy, indeed to the entropic nature of the economic process, is now critical — as emphasized by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen in his magisterial The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (1971).[4]
Why has his profound contribution been so roundly ignored for forty years? Because as limits to economic growth become more binding, the economists who made their reputations by pushing economic growth as panacea become uncomfortable. [4]
Indeed, were basic growth limits recognized, very many very prestigious economists would be seen to have been very wrong about some very basic issues for a very long time.[4]
Explain Entropy
They even bolster their threatened prestige with such pretension as “the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Science in Memory of Alfred Nobel” — which by journalistic contraction becomes, “the Nobel Prize in Economics,” infringing on the prestige of a real science, like physics.[4]
Yet it is only by ignoring the most basic laws of physics that growth economics has endured. Honoring the worthy contributions of economists should not require such flummery. [4]
once asked Georgescu-Roegen why the “MIT-Harvard mafia” (his term) never cited his book. He replied with a Romanian proverb to the effect that, “in the house of the condemned one does not mention the prosecutor.”[4]
Does Economics
Violate
The Laws of Physics?
Nathanial Gronewold
October 23, 2009
SYRACUSE, N.Y.—The financial crisis and subsequent global recession have led to much soul-searching among economists, the vast majority of whom never saw it coming. But were their assumptions and models wrong only because of minor errors or because today's dominant economic thinking violates the laws of physics?[5]
Matthias Ruth on Entropy Law and Economics
Many biophysical economic thinkers are trained in ecology and evolutionary biology, fields that do well at breaking down the natural world into a few fundamental laws and rules, just like physicists do. [5]
Though not all proponents of the new energy-centric academic study have been formally trained in economics, scholars coming in from other fields, especially ecology, say their skills allow them to see the global economy in a way that mainstream economists ignore.[5]
"Real economics is the study of how people transform nature to meet their needs," said Charles Hall, professor of systems ecology at SUNY-ESF and organizer of both gatherings in Syracuse. "Neoclassical economics is inconsistent with the laws of thermodynamics."[5]
CANSEE 2013 - William E. Rees,
Ecological Economics, Degrowth and Denial
Ecological Economics, Degrowth and Denial
