Big Think Interview With Gerald Chertavian
Gerald Chertavian is the CEO and Founder of Year Up, a non-profit organization that provides intensive professional education to urban young adults. His organization was recently recognized by Fast Company and The Monitor Group as one of the top 25 organizations in the nation using business excellence to engineer social change. Prior to starting Year Up, Chertavian co-founded Conduit Communications and served as the head of marketing at Transnational Financial Services in London. He has been an active member of the Big Brother mentoring program since 1985, and was awarded New York’s outstanding member in 1989. He was also awarded the 2003 Social Entrepreneurship Award by the Manhattan Institute and the 2005 Freedom House Archie R. Williams, Jr. Technology Award. A graduate of Bowdoin College and Harvard Business School, Chertavian was born and raised in Lowell, MA.
Gerald Chertavian: My name's Gerald Chertavian, and I'm the founder and CEO of Year Up.
Question: Will business and charity become more linked in the coming years?
Gerald Chertavian: Absolutely. In fact, I think the whole movement of social entrepreneurship, which is about applying business principles to the nonprofit sector, it's solving social challenges in innovative ways and perhaps ways that weren't solved before. It's about what we call a tripartite partnership between the nonprofit sector, the private sector and the public sector, which is a new way -- it's a new social contract -- in terms of how we're going to solve social challenges in this country. And that is very different from the '60s and '70s, when government would scale up a nonprofit organization and have the resources to do that. So I think we're really in a paradigm shift as to how we collectively are going to solve social challenges in this country and who has skin in that game. And it's not just the government, it's not just the nonprofit sector and it's not just the private sector. Those three sectors have to work together differently than they have in the past. And I think many of the social entrepreneurs that I know and respect think about solving challenges in ways that really reflect that need to partner with those three legs of that stool.
Question: How do partnerships distinguish your organization from others?
Gerald Chertavian: There's a few ways I think we're very different from other organizations, the first of which is, we focus incessantly on what I call ABC -- attitude, behavior and communication skills. And that we know that employers -- that you hire for skills and you fire for behavior, right, when you think about how the labor force works? So we spend at least half of our time focused very, very clearly on making sure our young adults have the attitudinal, behavioral and communication skills they need to be professionals in the knowledge-based economy. Many training programs and often schools focus on just a skill or a kind of work competency. That's only half the equation. So yes, half of our time will be focused on a technical skill or a financial skill, something that will be kind of bought by the private sector. But half of our time is on ABC -- attitude, behavior and communications. So that's one big difference between ourselves and others.
A second difference is, we are so driven by the needs of our corporate and organizational partners, where -- and if you think about our economic model, you know, we receive contributions from those organizations. If we don't do well, we do not get paid. If we don't get paid, we go out of business. So our economic incentives are wholly aligned with success for our students. If students do well, we stay in business. And let me ask you: how many nonprofits is the payor the same person who's the recipient of the service? And I think that disconnect often means that the person you're providing the service to, you don't have to be beholden to them because they're not the payer. Whereas in our case we have clients; they're called companies. And if they're not happy, we're not in business.
So I think having aligned economic incentives as a general principle -- if one wants think about it in the nonprofit sector as to how do I better align those incentives to make sure that the work we're doing is -- we are rewarded for results, we are rewarded for outcomes, and we're not rewarded for efforts, which many, many organizations are rewarded for trying. Oh, in the private sector it would have been great if someone paid me to try to build software. But we got paid when we actually -- they flicked the switch and the software worked. In the nonprofit sector I think equally we should be held accountable to those standards, where we are paid, remunerated or given money when we actually generate results for those we serve, have proven outcomes, and are not paid just to try to do something. So I think those are kind of two very fundamental things different to us in terms of the ways in which we serve our students and the ways in which we work with our corporate partners and the way we serve them.
Question: What is the most significant barrier to success for low-income youth?
Gerald Chertavian: Well, unfortunately, many of our young adults were born on the wrong side of the opportunity divide. And that's unfortunate, and it's wrong, and it limits their potential. So right now we live in a country where if you were born in the wrong ZIP code, if you had the wrong education system, if your parents had the wrong bank balance, and if you're a person of color, you were born on the wrong side of the opportunity divide in this country. Now you and I both know that those are not good reasons to prevent a young person from being successful. But I can absolutely guarantee, having worked in this for a decade and worked with several thousand young people, is, given the appropriate opportunity, setting very challenging standards, and then supporting people to achieve those standards, that the young adults we serve can literally achieve anything they set their minds to. And I've seen that time and time again. So the barriers are as much about context as they are about anything inherently wrong or challenging in the individual themselves.
So, you know, if you say go a little bit deeper, you know, our young adults don't grow up in neighborhoods where they have role models, so other adults working in our knowledge-based economy, that they can look to. Remember, 20 years ago you could look to someone in an urban community who had a blue collar job who was solidly in the middle class. The number of those jobs has dwindled, as we all know, as our manufacturing sector has shrunk, so that -- do I have the role models of the technician, the technical administrator? Do I have the role models of someone working in a professional services firm or professional firm? So you have a lack of role models. You have, unfortunately, a K-12 educational system where the requirements to graduate are not the requirements to be college and career-ready. So if you want young adults who are college and career-ready, our K-12 system right now does not have that as its standard. So often our young adults are going to public schools whereby even when they graduate they're not prepared to go to college or to earn more than minimum wage. So I think that's one challenge as well.
And I think the third -- if you think of why is this happening -- is our businesses today don't look at the young adults that we serve -- who tend to be low-income, eighteen to twenty-four, ninety-eight percent of color -- they're not looking at those young adults as talent. So when you think about who's talented in this country, and where talent resides in this country, many of our businesses are not looking right within their own communities to those young adults as a source of talent. In fact, on the reverse, many of those organizations and/or individuals may see our young adults as deficits, as liabilities, rather than assets. So you also have some perception changes that really need to go on to enable those young adults to realize the God-given potential that they have.
Question: What lessons can public schools learn from your organization?
Gerald Chertavian: All right, see, I would argue that you can find proxies for those incentives. I ask every one of our students: how would you change high school? You know, you're now in Year Up, you've seen a different way, you've seen a kind of professional learning environment. How would you change high school? And clearly, three things come out time and time and time again. One is relevance -- I need what I'm learning to be relevant to my future. And if you look at some of our great vocational technical schools, students are doing exceptionally well there because the learning is very relevant to them. They're learning something they know how that will apply. So relevance is critical. Relationships are deeply critical. Many of our students say, we wish we had a mentor in high school. We wish we had someone we could spend more time with, who paid more attention to us, who I could sit down with and talk to when I had a problem. So relationships are critical.
And last is being rigorous. So our students say, I wish they had higher standards for us in high school; I wish they expected more from us. I wish we had a dress code so we didn't have to worry about what each other wore every day. So I think our young adults know what they need to be successful and are willing to be held accountable. I often think our adults are failing our children in certain parts of our public education system. But if you go to a well-run public school, a well-run charter school or a well-run program like Year Up, I will guarantee you, you will find relevance, rigor and relationships at the core of the culture of that organization and how they serve young people. So we -- look, we know what works in education. What is hard is replicating that systemically across millions of children, tens of thousand of schools and millions of teachers. So we do know what works, but it's been very hard in education to find a way to replicate that system across a wide swathe of schools.
Gerald Chertavian: College today is an expensive option without a lot of economies of scale, right, when you go and live at a college. So you have a system that's increasing its cost base by probably five percent a year. So when you go to college, if you go to an Ivy League college, it's going to cost you forty-five thousand a year, plus let's not forget the endowment maybe kicks off another fifteen thousand to twenty thousand dollars. So you're going to spend sixty-five thousand dollars to educate someone, for four years, right, so now we're talking a lot more than that, sixty-five thousand times four. That's not a tenable cost structure. You will not educate millions and millions and millions of Americans -- to the extent we need an educated workforce and a skilled labor force, that system will not have the capacity to educate people to the extent this country needs them. So we can want college graduates, but I can guarantee you we're going to have at least a ten to fifteen-million-person shortage of college graduates in this country over the next ten to fifteen years, whether we like it or not.
So if we're going to remain competitive as a country, if we're going to have a knowledge-based workforce, we have to think about what are the other strategies, pathways, policies that encourage young people to get the skills and the credentials they need to be a good source of supply for our companies in this country, and to be good workers in this country. This -- and companies -- my prediction is companies will lead this revolution. So if we think our educational establishments and our colleges are going to respond quickly enough, your companies ultimately will say, we need to take matters into our own hands. We will do more work training because we can't trust the public education system to do what we need to do. So you will see the rise of large companies saying, we are now getting greater into the business of education because the system is not producing the number of skilled workers we need.
Question: Does this approach contradict the value of a classical liberal arts education?
Gerald Chertavian: When you think about what you said, a classical liberal arts education, what we need today is -- clearly you have to have core content, right? You've got to know how to write, how to read, how to do mathematics. And you need core subject areas, where there's history, geography, science. So that's never going to change, and anything I'm about to say is predicated upon the fact that you must have that to start. But if you look at what is demanded in this economy and our society, there's an increasing premium being placed on critical thinking skills, problem-solving skills, complex communications -- so how I sell something, persuade you, influence you -- so complex communications. And then what's called expert thinking, which is solving a problem for which there isn't a rule-based outcome. So those skills are paid probably twice what they were today than just twenty years ago.
Now, I would argue, if you said classical liberal arts, what you are describing to me is someone who has a pretty broad base of knowledge, clearly has all the core areas covered, they've gone deep one place, but you're really saying, I believe they can think, they can learn, they can solve problems, and they can think critically, and they can communicate with me. That's, I would argue, your concept of a classical liberal arts education. What I'm saying is, if we don't find smarter, faster, better ways to help people learn those skills, don't think a forty-five-thousand dollar-a-year college is going to do it for the rest of America, because it's not. There's got to be a better way to do it, and we need to come to grips with that as quickly as possible, recognize that those skills can be learned in different settings, if we are to remain competitive in this country.
Question: Is the importance of an undergraduate degree declining?
Gerald Chertavian: Well, for many, many years we bifurcated society at a certain age. You go to college, you go to the workforce. And that was really a split in how we conceived of who was educated and even what the role of a four-year college degree meant and was for, for hundreds and hundreds of years. Now if you go to one hundred adults in America today and you say, raise your hand if you have a college degree, about twenty-nine will raise their hand. If you then say, keep your hand up if you got that degree between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, about eight hands will be up. So when you think of one hundred Americans -- anywhere in the country, choose One hundred Americans – ninety-two either don't have a college degree, or even if they did they didn't get it between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two. So when we think about the role of post-secondary education in America today, we really have to ask our politicians and our policy-makers, are we designing policies in the image of how we perhaps consumed higher education? Right? Which is eighteen to twenty-two, fixed time, you know, school with buildings. That is eight percent of the adults in America today. So maybe if we work real hard, we're going to get from eight to twelve percent, or eight to ten percent, a twenty percent growth in that.
But I reckon there's a lot more gain to be made by saying the other 92 percent of adult Americans need to get post-secondary credentials, need to consume higher education, but doing it in a fixed-term four-year degree is not necessarily the way that Americans will consume higher education in the future. In fact, it was -- I was listening, before he passed away, to Peter Drucker, and he had said, don't take four-year college for granted. And what he was saying back then is what we're seeing play out today, is the fact that an average age of a Bachelor of Arts in America is about twenty-seven and a half years old. So the person getting a B.A. in America today is on average twenty and a half. The average student in a public university works twenty-five hours a week.
So we have to design policies and support systems for Americans who will work while they get educated, who will be older when they get educated, and who will not necessarily do this in one chunk of time between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two. It is imperative -- if we're going to have a society of skilled workers, of knowledge-based workers, which we know we need to have to be competitive globally -- it is imperative that we design our educational systems to reflect the changing needs of Americans in the way they are consuming higher education today
Question: Are corporations ready to stop focusing on graduates of four-year universities?
Gerald Chertavian: The answer is, yes they are, but they need to see proof. So we've had several of our largest corporate partners, who would be in your Fortune 100 of this country, change their hiring practices such that they can hire someone who is getting a college degree but doesn't yet have one into their workforce. So we -- you know, all of our students are dual-enrolled in college. So we're not at all neglecting the fact that you have to earn a post-secondary credential, at least one year of post-secondary at minimum, and hopefully continue on from that.
But we're seeing now large corporations who have seen our young adults in action saying, actually, we want to hire these young adults, and therefore we need to change the policy of the company in order to allow us to do that. So we're seeing that movement. I've also seen companies say, you now, Gerald, we really only hire people with college degrees. And what I often ask is, specifically can you help me to understand what are you looking for when you say that? What skills, competencies, attitudes and behaviors are you looking for when you made that statement? And then I say, if I could prove to you that our students have that, would you not give them a chance? Because then I'm asking, if you said you need X and we provide X, then you're using a proxy for something -- a college degree -- when I can give you demonstrable proof our students have the things. So would you want a proxy that you may or may not know whether they studied or not? You may or may not know the quality of the institution they went to. You may or may not know whether they actually partied twenty-three hours out of twenty-four or actually got an education. Or I can show you demonstrably what they have from skills. Which would you rather have?
Question: Is the sense of social responsibility increasing among your colleagues?
Gerald Chertavian: When I was at Harvard Business School back in 1990, there were probably eight people in the non-profit club. And I think we were looked at slightly askance by the folks because it wasn't the venture capital club or the finance club. Now today on campus, the largest single club at Harvard Business School is the social enterprise club. So in 20 years, or less than that, you have had a shift in something pretty fundamental in this country around, I think, young people wanting to take more responsibility for those around them, seeing the responsibility slightly more broadly defined than just motivated self-interest, and getting involved. So we have so many more young folks in our colleges, in our grad schools today, mentoring our students, volunteering, getting involved in service movements like AmeriCorps and Vista.
So I think the pendulum is certainly swinging to a direction where many young people are taking more responsibility for those around them and realizing that's not at odds with, you know, good old motivated self-interest and free-market capitalism. And in fact, you know, we all remember that Adam Smith wrote a book called The Wealth of Nations and talked about free markets and capitalism and why they were good ultimately for our society. He also wrote another book. He was talking about the theory of moral essentials. And what he said is, you can have a free market, and it's going to work best, but at the same time, at some point you have to realize that just getting more and more and more is actually not in society's best interest. So even Adam Smith, as our free-market economist would say, there's a concept of being responsible for others and wrote a book about that equally. I think we don't remember. He actually wrote a few books. One of them talked about moral essentials and the dangers of just seeing an accretive process without any sense of what's enough, or any sense of distribution that I have the opportunity how to help others. You know, that's equally part of keeping a very strong and well-functioning capitalist society in check.
Question: Is the rise in people heading into non-profits sustainable?
Gerald Chertavian: Certainly many, many more grad schools are offering loan forgiveness or a loan reduction for those going into the nonprofit sector, and I do think with the rise of social entrepreneurship, the rise of non-profits, hiring better and better people, growing more quickly, we are attracting incredible talent into this sector. And the reality is, people are getting paid more and more, so the gap between the nonprofit and private sector is shrinking. And certainly in the last ten years it's shrinking from when I started back in 2000. The other way I think about the pendulum is, I'm not a huge proponent of handouts, so I have not seen, with people who are able-bodied and able-minded, where handouts are producing good outcomes. And a sense of entitlement is a very destructive sentiment. And if you ever want to play the victim, you're not going to get ahead.
So when I think about that pendulum, there's a lot of personal accountability that has to be invested in any nonprofit organization, I think, that is serving someone who is able-bodied and able-minded. I mean, there are needs for charitable acts, or needs for handouts for someone who really cannot provide for themselves or has slipped to a place where they literally cannot take care of themselves. But that's not a majority, I think, of what we're trying to do here, especially at Year Up. We believe you've got to combine deep personal accountability -- taking charge of yourself, not saying woe is me, but saying I want a chance; I want an opportunity. I mean, America needs to be an opportunity society. And so the young adults we serve want an opportunity. They do not want a handout; they want a hand up. And so my belief is that pendulum, in terms of maybe reaching out and supporting others, also has to be balanced by a healthy dose of personal accountability for those being helped. And without which I don't think the system will ever work well.
Question: What challenges did you face in raising funds for your company?
Gerald Chertavian: I had lived for ten years abroad, in London, where my private company was. We sold that and moved back to America. So I left America when I was twenty-five and came back when I was thirty-five. I didn't have a heck of a network when I came back, and so had to, from scratch, find people who believed in the business plan I wrote and believed in the conviction in my voice, to say I will walk you around to meet the right people. So I remember back to when I was just myself and a phone, the people who said, we'll take a chance on this; we'll introduce you to the right people; we'll get you in front of the CEOs -- so those early champions -- I think of people like Craig Underwood, Tim Dibble -- they actually believed in us when there was nothing. And they had no right to believe in us per se. I mean, it was just me. So the challenge was -- you know, it's also an inspiration to me -- yes, it's a challenge to find those people, but it's inspiring to me to think that those people out there exist. Both of those gentlemen worked in the private sector and said, we'll actually give you a hand to try to do this.
So I think establishing a network took a lot of effort early on. Asking people for money is all about how you think about it. You know, I don't -- I think I'm -- I'm providing people with an opportunity to invest in something which works really well. You know, I'm providing people an opportunity to release the trapped energy in their money. I mean, money's only trapped energy, and you can untrap it a lot of different ways. But we're going to give you a way to invest in something that works. And you can see the results; you can see someone get a job, someone do well, someone get a college education. That's a great opportunity. If you are blessed enough to have capital that you can give away, you want to give it to the highest return, where it does the most good. Well, I'm fortunate in that Year Up is a great return on investment that is very demonstrable. So I think raising money can be hard if you think about it the wrong way. I think you have to think about it and what it is: is you're providing people with a beautiful opportunity, and you're brokering their desire to help and their desire to create change, with something that actually creates positive change and is very outcomes-driven and verifiable. So I think that, in terms of raising money, is not so hard.
I'll be honest with you: the only thing that I've found hard in the last ten years -- and I mean this sincerely, because no other part of Year Up I've found difficult in terms of what keeps me up at night. You know, these are little -- you know, how to grow a business is a problem; you manage around it. How to hire people -- well, you work hard and you find great people. They're business problems. If there weren't problems, you wouldn't have managers, right? What's hard for me -- the only thing that's hard for me -- is when one of our students gets hurt, or, God forbid, killed. Those are the only days when I feel like someone really hit me hard in the stomach, is when one of our students is physically or deeply emotionally damaged by the kind of wanton acts of others. So that's the one thing I find hard; nothing else, you know -- if you find those things hard you shouldn't be in business; that's just part of being in business, is you solve problems, and that's just the way it is.
Question: How does working for a non-profit differ from working in the corporate world?
Gerald Chertavian: The way in which we're treated, it's different in some respects in terms of who we're speaking with. So in the for-profit sector we tend to talk to the chief executive officer of an organization. So we'll work really hard to get that thirty minutes with someone like Jamie Dimon or Ken Chenault, someone who's really significant. And what I've found is, many of those leaders have a deep understanding of the social responsibility that they carry being leaders of large organizations. So for us, if we can get to the right individual, I've been very, very impressed with, one, the amount of time they've taken, the care and the thought they've put into thinking about can we pilot something like a Year Up in our companies, and also their willingness to champion it when it's the first time through the organization. So I think they also sense a genuineness in the work we do and a lot of demonstrated success from many of the corporations around America.
Whereas in the private sector, when I was working in technology -- it was the early days of technology -- and so there was a lot of stumbling, learning. There was motivated buying from, I'd say, fear -- where if I don't do this thing called the Internet, that might hurt my company, or by greed -- if I do it I'm going to get rich. But it was very early days when we were first getting into the Internet, and there was a lot more confusion, a lot less clarity. And certainly I don't think we ever had a proven model that we could offer to someone that we now have in Year Up, where it is a proven model. It's worked for thousands of young people, and we know we can look a senior executive in the eye and say, we can provide you with a long-term successful pipeline of talent to help fuel your need for skilled workers, and to know that we've done that for thousands of young people across hundreds of organizations.
Question: Why do you think your company has thrived?
Gerald Chertavian: So Year Up is successful largely because we're able to provide value to a business. And the way in which our model works is, our corporations contribute quite a lot of money to us for the benefit of having access to this talent pool, to develop that talent pool, to find sources of talent out into the future. It's priced in such a way that no one would do it for charitable purposes alone. And that was very conscious. So it's -- I would say 80 to 85 percent of what we do is down to providing businesses with valuable employees for our pipeline of talent, and I think they would pay a premium to do this of probably fifteen to twenty percent more than they may work with a company that wasn't serving this population because it has good value for the community, it has value for the sense of responsibility for the organization itself, and really we've measured the satisfaction level of employees who work with our students, and it's been demonstrably higher. So I think there's an internal motivation that this creates happy employees, it gives opportunity to young people in our community, and ultimately we as business people know that you cannot have a healthy economy without a healthy community.
Question: If you could sit down with anybody, who would it be?
Gerald Chertavian: Yeah. I would like to sit down with Martin Luther King and try to understand the thoughts he was having at that point around grassroots movements around civil rights, kind of seeing how he thought about galvanizing people, how he saw that movement. So I think to sit down to see how someone thought about and helped to lead a movement, because of -- and not that I would try to emulate that; I think our students will be the people to lead Year Up to the future; our graduates are the ones who are my heroes and the ones who will run this organization. I happen to be a steward for a very short period of time. But I'm not that person.
But if I can understand how do these movements form, because what we do is about economic and social justice. It is the next step in civil rights. Having an opportunity nation is deeply important to maintain your democracy and your civilized society in this country. So when you think about the continuation of civil rights, it is about opportunity; it is about economic justice; it is about social justice. And Year Up is one element of that. We kneel on the shoulders of those before us, who risked much, much more to accomplish what they accomplished. And so I'd be deeply interested to learn from them, to sit down and understand what they saw -- how they saw this go forward -- and perhaps what we could learn to help this next step in civil rights move forward in this country.
Recorded on: October 29, 2009
Big Think sits down with the Founder and CEO of Year Up.
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How tiny bioelectronic implants may someday replace pharmaceutical drugs
Scientists are using bioelectronic medicine to treat inflammatory diseases, an approach that capitalizes on the ancient "hardwiring" of the nervous system.
- Bioelectronic medicine is an emerging field that focuses on manipulating the nervous system to treat diseases.
- Clinical studies show that using electronic devices to stimulate the vagus nerve is effective at treating inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.
- Although it's not yet approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, vagus nerve stimulation may also prove effective at treating other diseases like cancer, diabetes and depression.
The nervous system’s ancient reflexes
<p>You accidentally place your hand on a hot stove. Almost instantaneously, your hand withdraws.</p><p>What triggered your hand to move? The answer is <em>not</em> that you consciously decided the stove was hot and you should move your hand. Rather, it was a reflex: Skin receptors on your hand sent nerve impulses to the spinal cord, which ultimately sent back motor neurons that caused your hand to move away. This all occurred before your "conscious brain" realized what happened.</p><p>Similarly, the nervous system has reflexes that protect individual cells in the body.</p><p>"The nervous system evolved because we need to respond to stimuli in the environment," said Dr. Tracey. "Neural signals don't come from the brain down first. Instead, when something happens in the environment, our peripheral nervous system senses it and sends a signal to the central nervous system, which comprises the brain and spinal cord. And then the nervous system responds to correct the problem."</p><p>So, what if scientists could "hack" into the nervous system, manipulating the electrical activity in the nervous system to control molecular processes and produce desirable outcomes? That's the chief goal of bioelectronic medicine.</p><p>"There are billions of neurons in the body that interact with almost every cell in the body, and at each of those nerve endings, molecular signals control molecular mechanisms that can be defined and mapped, and potentially put under control," Dr. Tracey said in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJH9KsMKi5M" target="_blank">TED Talk</a>.</p><p>"Many of these mechanisms are also involved in important diseases, like cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, hypertension and shock. It's very plausible that finding neural signals to control those mechanisms will hold promises for devices replacing some of today's medication for those diseases."</p><p>How can scientists hack the nervous system? For years, researchers in the field of bioelectronic medicine have zeroed in on the longest cranial nerve in the body: the vagus nerve.</p>The vagus nerve
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTYyOTM5OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NTIwNzk0NX0.UCy-3UNpomb3DQZMhyOw_SQG4ThwACXW_rMnc9mLAe8/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=0%2C0%2C0%2C0&height=700" id="09add" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f38dbfbbfe470ad85a3b023dd5083557" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1245" data-height="700" />Electrical signals, seen here in a synapse, travel along the vagus nerve to trigger an inflammatory response.
Credit: Adobe Stock via solvod
<p>The vagus nerve ("vagus" meaning "wandering" in Latin) comprises two nerve branches that stretch from the brainstem down to the chest and abdomen, where nerve fibers connect to organs. Electrical signals constantly travel up and down the vagus nerve, facilitating communication between the brain and other parts of the body.</p><p>One aspect of this back-and-forth communication is inflammation. When the immune system detects injury or attack, it automatically triggers an inflammatory response, which helps heal injuries and fend off invaders. But when not deployed properly, inflammation can become excessive, exacerbating the original problem and potentially contributing to diseases.</p><p>In 2002, Dr. Tracey and his colleagues discovered that the nervous system plays a key role in monitoring and modifying inflammation. This occurs through a process called the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01321" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">inflammatory reflex</a>. In simple terms, it works like this: When the nervous system detects inflammatory stimuli, it reflexively (and subconsciously) deploys electrical signals through the vagus nerve that trigger anti-inflammatory molecular processes.</p><p>In rodent experiments, Dr. Tracey and his colleagues observed that electrical signals traveling through the vagus nerve control TNF, a protein that, in excess, causes inflammation. These electrical signals travel through the vagus nerve to the spleen. There, electrical signals are converted to chemical signals, triggering a molecular process that ultimately makes TNF, which exacerbates conditions like rheumatoid arthritis.</p><p>The incredible chain reaction of the inflammatory reflex was observed by Dr. Tracey and his colleagues in greater detail through rodent experiments. When inflammatory stimuli are detected, the nervous system sends electrical signals that travel through the vagus nerve to the spleen. There, the electrical signals are converted to chemical signals, which trigger the spleen to create a white blood cell called a T cell, which then creates a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. The acetylcholine interacts with macrophages, which are a specific type of white blood cell that creates TNF, a protein that, in excess, causes inflammation. At that point, the acetylcholine triggers the macrophages to stop overproducing TNF – or inflammation.</p><p>Experiments showed that when a specific part of the body is inflamed, specific fibers within the vagus nerve start firing. Dr. Tracey and his colleagues were able to map these relationships. More importantly, they were able to stimulate specific parts of the vagus nerve to "shut off" inflammation.</p><p>What's more, clinical trials show that vagus nerve stimulation not only "shuts off" inflammation, but also triggers the production of cells that promote healing.</p><p>"In animal experiments, we understand how this works," Dr. Tracey said. "And now we have clinical trials showing that the human response is what's predicted by the lab experiments. Many scientific thresholds have been crossed in the clinic and the lab. We're literally at the point of regulatory steps and stages, and then marketing and distribution before this idea takes off."<br></p>The future of bioelectronic medicine
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTYxMDYxMy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNjQwOTExNH0.uBY1TnEs_kv9Dal7zmA_i9L7T0wnIuf9gGtdRXcNNxo/img.jpg?width=980" id="8b5b2" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="c005e615e5f23c2817483862354d2cc4" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="2000" data-height="1125" />Vagus nerve stimulation can already treat Crohn's disease and other inflammatory diseases. In the future, it may also be used to treat cancer, diabetes, and depression.
Credit: Adobe Stock via Maridav
<p>Vagus nerve stimulation is currently awaiting approval by the US Food and Drug Administration, but so far, it's proven safe and effective in clinical trials on humans. Dr. Tracey said vagus nerve stimulation could become a common treatment for a wide range of diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, hypertension, shock, depression and diabetes.</p><p>"To the extent that inflammation is the problem in the disease, then stopping inflammation or suppressing the inflammation with vagus nerve stimulation or bioelectronic approaches will be beneficial and therapeutic," he said.</p><p>Receiving vagus nerve stimulation would require having an electronic device, about the size of lima bean, surgically implanted in your neck during a 30-minute procedure. A couple of weeks later, you'd visit, say, your rheumatologist, who would activate the device and determine the right dosage. The stimulation would take a few minutes each day, and it'd likely be unnoticeable.</p><p>But the most revolutionary aspect of bioelectronic medicine, according to Dr. Tracey, is that approaches like vagus nerve stimulation wouldn't come with harmful and potentially deadly side effects, as many pharmaceutical drugs currently do.</p><p>"A device on a nerve is not going to have systemic side effects on the body like taking a steroid does," Dr. Tracey said. "It's a powerful concept that, frankly, scientists are quite accepting of—it's actually quite amazing. But the idea of adopting this into practice is going to take another 10 or 20 years, because it's hard for physicians, who've spent their lives writing prescriptions for pills or injections, that a computer chip can replace the drug."</p><p>But patients could also play a role in advancing bioelectronic medicine.</p><p>"There's a huge demand in this patient cohort for something better than they're taking now," Dr. Tracey said. "Patients don't want to take a drug with a black-box warning, costs $100,000 a year and works half the time."</p><p>Michael Dowling, president and CEO of Northwell Health, elaborated:</p><p>"Why would patients pursue a drug regimen when they could opt for a few electronic pulses? Is it possible that treatments like this, pulses through electronic devices, could replace some drugs in the coming years as preferred treatments? Tracey believes it is, and that is perhaps why the pharmaceutical industry closely follows his work."</p><p>Over the long term, bioelectronic approaches are unlikely to completely replace pharmaceutical drugs, but they could replace many, or at least be used as supplemental treatments.</p><p>Dr. Tracey is optimistic about the future of the field.</p><p>"It's going to spawn a huge new industry that will rival the pharmaceutical industry in the next 50 years," he said. "This is no longer just a startup industry. [...] It's going to be very interesting to see the explosive growth that's going to occur."</p>Is it time to decriminalize prostitution? Two New York bills answer yes in unique ways
One bill hopes to repeal the crime of selling sex and expand social services; the other would legalize the entire sex trade.
The Equality Model asks, criminal or victim?
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTcwMzY3OS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxOTUxNjE3M30.g5Ln46h9dqAFsymzKPhZ22-euuhjzAqLcreFKC2oOn0/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=0%2C896%2C0%2C-1&height=700" id="06827" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ef934a819b529e8ec5ba6412bf332cfb" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1245" data-height="700" />Advocates stand outside a courthouse to protest Ghislaine Maxwell, former girlfriend to Jeffrey Epstein, for her role in his sex-trafficking ring.
Credit: Timothy A. Clary/Getty Images
<p>The most recent of the two is the Sex Trade Survivors Justice & Equality Act. Set to be introduced by Senator Liz Krueger of Manhattan, the law would repeal the crime of prostitution in the state but would maintain punitive measures against buyers and pimps. The penalty for buying sex, for example, would be a sliding-scale fine based on income.<strong> </strong>The bill also aims to strengthen laws against trafficking and eliminate the so-called <a href="http://ypdcrime.com/penal.law/article230.htm#p230.03" target="_blank">ignorance defense</a>, which affords buyers legal cover if they did not have "reasonable grounds" to assume their victim was underage.</p><p>The Sex Trade Survivors Justice & Equality Act is based on <a href="https://www.equalitymodelus.org/why-the-equality-model/" target="_blank">the Equality Model</a>, first introduced in Sweden in 1999. Under the Swedish Sex Purchase Act, the country decriminalized prostitution and began targeting buyers and suppliers with the goal of lowering demand. As demand decreased, the thinking went, Sweden would witness a subsequent reduction in violence, trafficking, and the trauma associated so strongly with the illicit sex trade. And <a href="https://www.government.se/4a4908/contentassets/8f0c2ccaa84e455f8bd2b7e9c557ff3e/english-summary-of-sou-2010-49.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a 2008 report</a> did find that the strategy manifested some of those goals. </p><p>After the law's introduction, costs increased, fewer men sought to purchase sex, and the number of women in street prostitution halved—though the burgeoning internet scene likely influenced that metric as much as the law. </p><p>As for Sweden's prostituted population, the report was mixed. Fears of the law driving prostitution further underground weren't realized, nor did the risks of physical abuse or dangerous living conditions increase. However, while people who sought to leave the life favored the law, those who wished to stay in the trade denigrated it for hyping the social stigma. </p><p>After the report's release, countries such as Norway, Iceland, Canada, and Israel adopted the Equality Model, and today, many U.S. advocacy groups champion for states to institute similar laws.</p><p>"We who have been in the human-trafficking policy movement for a long time have been advocating for years that people in prostitution should not be criminalized for their exploitation," Alexi Meyers, director of anti-trafficking policy at <a href="https://sanctuaryforfamilies.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Sanctuary for Families</a>, told Big Think in an interview discussing the New York bill. "It's the only law where the victim is arrested. Instead of handcuffs, [people in prostitution] need services, need housing, need support."</p><p>Critically, the Sex Trade Survivors Justice & Equality Act does more than decriminalize prostitution. It also bolsters social services such as housing, job training, and mental health care. To help finance these services, money collected by the aforementioned buyer fine will go into a victim-compensation fund. The bill also expands protections for minors arrested under safe harbor and would vacate victims' prior convictions so they could more easily find jobs. </p><p>"When someone has had no family support, have been abused their entire lives, and they haven't gotten the services they need, at the age of 18, they haven't magically transformed from a victim of trafficking into a prostitute," Jayne Bigelsen, vice president of advocacy for Covenant House, New York, said in our interview.</p><p>Bigelsen grants that not everyone engaged in the commercial sex trade may view themselves as a victim, but she notes that a large portion of the population remains vulnerable nonetheless. To treat such people as criminals, as so many contemporary laws do, does no one any favors. The fear of arrest <a href="http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/pdf/Prostitutionin9Countries.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">actively discourages</a> victims from seeking an "off-ramp" to the life and strengthens the coercive hold their pimps and traffickers maintain on them.</p><p>"[The law helps] reframe the understanding that this is not a crime. It is a form of gender-based violence and exploitation. I think, over time, people will have a greater understanding of that," Bigelsen adds.</p>Prostitution, an occupation like any other?
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTcwMzY1My9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2MTc3NjkzNX0.M_8OftwQ5yaGs4YyUPLIRNUAU7Ip-np2cNNdtEl8gLE/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=0%2C565%2C0%2C5&height=700" id="0b146" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="6027492cc1cb2a2168dc65154aed7845" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1245" data-height="700" />Sex workers in Amsterdam's famous red-light district, where window prostitution is permitted.
Credit: Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images
<p>But critics of the Equality Model believe it's disguised paternalism that robs women of the right to choose. Worse, they argue, it further stigmatizes sex workers within society and drives the sex trade further underground, where exploitation and violence can continue to fester from prying eyes.</p><p><a href="https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/s6419#:~:text=S6419%20(ACTIVE)%20%2D%20Sponsor%20Memo&text=Part%20B%20repeals%20and%20amends,are%20repealed%20under%20this%20bill." target="_blank">A second New York Senate bill</a>, currently in committee, would decriminalize the entire sex trade within the state. Called the Stop Violence in the Sex Trades Act, the bill would keep penal laws related to minors and sex trafficking but would make sex work between consenting adults a legal, regulated trade.</p><p>"Sex work is work and should not be criminalized by the state," Senator Julia Salazar, who introduced the bill, stated in <a href="https://www.decrimny.org/post/for-immediate-release-decrim-ny-legislators-intro-first-statewide-bill-to-decriminalize-sex-work" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a press release</a>. "Our current policies only empower traffickers and others who benefit from keeping sex work in the shadows. New York State needs to listen to sex workers and make these common-sense reforms to keep sex workers safe and empower sex workers in their workplaces."</p><p>Like the Sex Trade Survivors Justice & Equality Act, Salazar's bill draws inspiration from European laws, namely those from the Netherlands and Germany. Both countries legalized the sex trade a few years after Sweden introduced its Equality Model—though laws and regulations vary between the countries and even districts within them. For example, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/germany-introduces-unpopular-prostitution-law/a-39511761" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Germany has passed a law</a> that requires any business offering sex services to apply for a permit "that will only be granted if health, hygiene and room requirements are met," while <a href="https://www.amsterdam.nl/en/policy/policy-health-care/policy-prostitution/#:~:text=In%20Amsterdam%2C%20prostitution%20in%20private,supplying%20locations%20for%20illegal%20prostitution." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Amsterdam limits</a> window prostitution to specific city zones.</p><p>Full-decriminalization advocates hope such laws will facilitate freedom of choice, access to social services, improved health and working conditions, and the decoupling of the occupation from criminal enterprises. They also argue that full decriminalization closes the unintended consequences created by the Equality Model.</p><p>An <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/05/amnesty-international-publishes-policy-and-research-on-protection-of-sex-workers-rights/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Amnesty International</a> report notes that in Norway, sex workers are routinely evicted from their homes because landlords fear rental agreements will expose them to prosecution for promoting sex. Similar liability concerns deter third parties, such as security, from working with sex workers, too. As a result, sex workers themselves may not be prosecuted but their lives are no less secure nor more firmly established within society.</p><p>"What we have isn't working. The current model of criminalizing sex work traps sex workers and trafficking survivors in cycles of violence. The new proposed legislation referred to as the 'Equality Model' conflates sex work with sex trafficking, using the logic of broken windows policing to address trafficking by targeting sex workers," <a href="https://www.decrimny.org/post/the-equality-model-is-criminalization-by-another-name-pass-the-stop-violence-in-the-sex-trades-act" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">writes the advocacy group Decrim NY</a>.</p>New York State to lead decriminalization
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="28c828b962f38fcf2605aa8ed21553e4"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jMji-YE1qVA?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>Of course, Equality Model advocates have their arguments against full decriminalization. Even in countries that have legalized prostitution, the sex trade retains <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46919294" target="_blank">strong ties to criminal activities</a>. Prostituted women continue to be viewed as pariah—or, in the case of Amsterdam, tourist attractions. And like the legal sex trades of the ancient world, contemporary examples have witnessed a surge in human trafficking to meet the demand. More often than not, poor women from poor countries.</p><p>"If you decriminalize people who buy sex, you're removing any legal barriers or social barriers, and the number of people who buy sex will exponentially increase, and you'll have to fill that new, legal demand with supply. And that supply is human bodies, and there aren't enough willing participants to fulfill that need. That's when trafficking occurs," Alexi Myers said.</p><p><a href="https://ec.europa.eu/anti-trafficking/sites/antitrafficking/files/federal_government_report_of_the_impact_of_the_act_regulating_the_legal_situation_of_prostitutes_2007_en_1.pdf" target="_blank">A report commissioned</a> by Germany's Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth looked into the effects of the country's 2001 law. It found the intended impacts to be lacking. According to the report, the Prostitution Act did not create measurable improvements on social protection, working conditions, reduced crime, or the means for leaving the business. The report did assuage some fears, however, by finding that legalization did not make it more difficult to prosecute sex traffickers or related violence when they occurred.</p><p>All told, data will never point to a perfect solution to this or any social concern. In the case of prostitution, emotions and moral instinct run at the redline. Often, the solution one proposes comes down to one's answer of this question: What is prostitution? Is it a violation of another human's rights and dignity? An occupation like any other? Or a moral offense old as the law itself? </p><p>Whatever your answer, you'll likely find current U.S. law lacking. It's for this reason that <a href="https://www.governing.com/archive/more-states-separate-prostitution-sex-trafficking.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">many states are reanalyzing and revamping their prostitution laws</a> to protect victims, usually with more robust safe harbor laws. Whichever law New York State chooses, its successes and failures will likely serve as a bellwether for the United States moving forward.</p>Physicist creates AI algorithm that may prove reality is a simulation
A physicist creates an AI algorithm that predicts natural events and may prove the simulation hypothesis.
- Princeton physicist Hong Qin creates an AI algorithm that can predict planetary orbits.
- The scientist partially based his work on the hypothesis which believes reality is a simulation.
- The algorithm is being adapted to predict behavior of plasma and can be used on other natural phenomena.
Physicist Hong Qin with images of planetary orbits and computer code.
Credit: Elle Starkman
Are we living in a simulation? | Bill Nye, Joscha Bach, Donald Hoffman | Big Think
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4dbe18924f2f42eef5669e67f405b52e"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KDcNVZjaNSU?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>Japan finds a huge cache of scarce rare-earth minerals
Japan looks to replace China as the primary source of critical metals
- Enough rare earth minerals have been found off Japan to last centuries
- Rare earths are important materials for green technology, as well as medicine and manufacturing
- Where would we be without all of our rare-earth magnets?
What are the rare earth elements?
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xOTA2MTM0Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzODExMjMyMn0.owchAgxSBwji5IofgwKtueKSbHNyjPfT7hTJrHpTi98/img.jpg?width=980" id="fd315" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d8ed70e3d0b67b9cbe78414ffd02c43e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />(julie deshaies/Shutterstock)
<p>The rare earth metals can be mostly found in the second row from the bottom in the Table of Elements. According to the <a href="http://www.rareearthtechalliance.com/What-are-Rare-Earths" target="_blank"><u>Rare Earth Technology Alliance</u></a>, due to the "unique magnetic, luminescent, and electrochemical properties, these elements help make many technologies perform with reduced weight, reduced emissions, and energy consumption; or give them greater efficiency, performance, miniaturization, speed, durability, and thermal stability."</p><p>In order of atomic number, the rare earths are:</p> <ul> <li>Scandium or Sc (21) — This is used in TVs and energy-saving lamps.</li> <li>Yttrium or Y (39) — Yttrium is important in the medical world, used in cancer drugs, rheumatoid arthritis medications, and surgical supplies. It's also used in superconductors and lasers.</li> <li>Lanthanum or La (57) — Lanthanum finds use in camera/telescope lenses, special optical glasses, and infrared absorbing glass.</li> <li>Cerium or Ce (58) — Cerium is found in catalytic converters, and is used for precision glass-polishing. It's also found in alloys, magnets, electrodes, and carbon-arc lighting. </li> <li>Praseodymium or Pr (59) — This is used in magnets and high-strength metals.</li> <li>Neodymium or Nd (60) — Many of the magnets around you have neodymium in them: speakers and headphones, microphones, computer storage, and magnets in your car. It's also found in high-powered industrial and military lasers. The mineral is especially important for green tech. Each <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mining-toyota/as-hybrid-cars-gobble-rare-metals-shortage-looms-idUSTRE57U02B20090831" target="_blank"><u>Prius</u></a> motor, for example, requires 2.2 lbs of neodymium, and its battery another 22-33 lbs. <a href="https://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2011/5036/sir2011-5036.pdf" target="_blank"><u>Wind turbine batteries</u></a> require 450 lbs of neodymium per watt. </li> <li>Promethium or Pm (61) — This is used in pacemakers, watches, and research.</li> <li>Samarium or Sm (62) — This mineral is used in magnets in addition to intravenous cancer radiation treatments and nuclear reactor control rods.</li> <li>Europium or Eu (63) — Europium is used in color displays and compact fluorescent light bulbs.</li> <li>Gadolinium or Gd (64) — It's important for nuclear reactor shielding, cancer radiation treatments, as well as x-ray and bone-density diagnostic equipment.</li> <li>Terbium or Tb (65) — Terbium has similar uses to Europium, though it's also soft and thus possesses unique shaping capabilities .</li> <li>Dysprosium or Dy (66) — This is added to other rare-earth magnets to help them work at high temperatures. It's used for computer storage, in nuclear reactors, and in energy-efficient vehicles.</li> <li>Holmium or Ho (67) — Holmium is used in nuclear control rods, microwaves, and magnetic flux concentrators.</li> <li>Erbium or Er (68) — This is used in fiber-optic communication networks and lasers.</li> <li>Thulium or Tm (69) — Thulium is another laser rare earth.</li> <li>Ytterbium or Yb (70) — This mineral is used in cancer treatments, in stainless steel, and in seismic detection devices.</li> <li>Lutetium or Lu (71) — Lutetium can target certain cancers, and is used in petroleum refining and positron emission tomography.</li></ul>Where Japan found is rare earths
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xOTA2MTM0OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1MTA0NzUxNn0.N3t_iKf6lnnoJ6yVUtl8-wNZICEG2ZxyPzm9ZdE99ks/img.jpg?width=980" id="021b7" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d9dd843fde547a0b69f8798aca18a706" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Minimatori Torishima Island
(Chief Master Sergeant Don Sutherland, U.S. Air Force)
<p>Japan located the rare earths about 1,850 kilometers off the shore of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minami-Tori-shima" target="_blank"><u>Minamitori Island</u></a>. Engineers located the minerals in 10-meter-deep cores taken from sea floor sediment. Mapping the cores revealed and area of approximately 2,500 square kilometers containing rare earths.</p><p>Japan's engineers estimate there's 16 million tons of rare earths down there. That's <a href="https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/historical-statistics/ds140-raree.xlsx" target="_blank"><u>five times</u></a> the amount of the rare earth elements ever mined since 1900. According to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/rare-earth-minerals-found-in-japan-2018-4?r=US&IR=T" target="_blank"><u>Business Insider</u></a>, there's "enough yttrium to meet the global demand for 780 years, dysprosium for 730 years, europium for 620 years, and terbium for 420 years."</p><p>The bad news, of course, is that Japan has to figure out how to extract the minerals from 6-12 feet under the seabed four miles beneath the ocean surface — that's the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23948-5" target="_blank"><u>next step</u></a> for the country's engineers. The good news is that the location sits squarely within Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone, so their rights to the lucrative discovery will be undisputed.</p>Fight or flight? Why some people flee and others stand their ground
How different people react to threats of violence.
