The Impact of the European Commission and External Changes on the Reform of the Common Agricultural Policy: Insights from Theory
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Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Jo Swinnen
Professor of Economics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Speaker
Seminars
Informal Care for the Elderly in South Korea and the Impact on Caregivers' Labor Force Participation
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Rapid population aging in many Asian countries poses an increased burden of care for elderly people with disabilities. Traditionally, care for the disabled elderly was provided by family members co-residing or living nearby. However, declining fertility rates, eroding social norms, and growing rates of labor force participation among females have changed the overall picture of informal care.
One important policy question is whether informal caregiving affects caregivers' labor force participation. This question is particularly relevant for rapidly developing economies including newly industrialized countries, because a shrinking working-age population is another major concern with population aging. Providing different answers to this question leads to different policy implications for long-term care policy and labor market policy.
Most of the existing literature on this issue comes from the United States and Europe. Using data from the first wave of the "Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging", Do's research not only provides results from a less-studied Asian society, but also takes into account different patterns of living arrangements and labor force participation. His talk will deal with the methodological issue of endogeneity between informal caregiving and labor force participation, and explore gender and age group differences.
Young Kyung Do is currently completing his PhD in health policy and administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health. He has also earned both an MD and a master of public health degrees from Seoul National University (in 1997 and 2003, respectively). Young earned board certification in preventive medicine from the Korean Medical Association in 2004.
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
Young K. Do
Speaker
Seminars
Nobel Prize-winning geneticist Joshua Lederberg dies at 82
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Joshua Lederberg, PhD, winner of the 1958 Nobel Prize for his discovery of how bacteria transfer genes, died Feb. 2 of pneumonia. He was 82.
Months after winning the Nobel Prize, Lederberg arrived at the Stanford University School of Medicine to become the chair of genetics in 1959, after leaving his post at the University of Wisconsin. He led Stanford’s genetics department at a time when the medical school earned a reputation for research, until he left in 1978 to become president of The Rockefeller University in New York until 1990.
Lederberg shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Edward Tatum and George Beadle. His portion of the prize came from his discovery that bacteria transfer genetic information, overturning the prevailing thought that bacteria weren’t able to swap DNA. Lederberg found that bacteria exchange loops of DNA called plasmids that allow bacteria to pick up new genes, and thereby adapt to new environments. The process Lederberg discovered has become a standard way for researchers to transfer genetic information between bacteria in the lab, and changed how researchers thought about infectious disease. It also laid the foundation for modern molecular biology, genetic engineering and biotechnology.
“Dr. Josh Lederberg was one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century with staggering achievements from virology and microbiology to genetics and planetary exploration,” said Philip Pizzo, MD, dean of the Stanford School of Medicine. “He was not only a world-renowned scientist but also an advocate on science and public policy. His impact on Stanford can be felt to this day and will surely continue long into the future.”
Lederberg was only 33 when he came to Stanford, but he already had a long research career that began in high school.
His father was a rabbi, and when Lederberg was a teen he promised to aid humanity through science rather than faith. He began doing independent research at the science-focused Stuyvesant High School, then continued that research as an undergraduate student at Columbia College. After starting medical school at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons he left after two years to pursue a PhD at Yale, working with Tatum and Beadle on studies that led to their shared Nobel.
The year Lederberg arrived to head Stanford’s genetics department was a pivotal one in the medical school’s history. The school was in the process of moving from San Francisco to join the Stanford campus in Palo Alto. During that same time period Arthur Kornberg, PhD, who went on to win the 1959 Nobel Prize in Biochemistry, arrived to found Stanford’s biochemistry department. The departments led by Kornberg and Lederberg helped establish the medical school as a leader in biomedical research.
One of Lederberg’s first recruits to the new department was Leonard Herzenberg, PhD, emeritus professor of genetics, who went on to develop the fluorescence-activated cell sorting machine that opened up new areas of biological research. Herzenberg said Lederberg was supportive of his work without being dominating. “Josh was important for my life and for my career and made possible the development of the FACS,” he said.
Richard Myers, PhD, professor and the current chair of Stanford’s genetics department, called Lederberg a visionary. He said Lederberg recognized the importance of human genetics in a time when few people worked in that field. “That’s how Stanford became well-known in human and population genetics early on before it was really popular,” Myers said.
In addition to his scientific skills, Myers said he respected Lederberg for his diverse interests and generous personality. “He was extremely warm and interesting,” he said.
Throughout his career Lederberg had interests that strayed far from the laboratory bench. The launch of Sputnik in 1957 led Lederberg toward an interest in astronomy that lasted 20 years. His concern about the risk of spacecraft returning to Earth with contaminants from space resulted in a quarantine for space travel that remains in effect today. He went on to design experiments intended to detect the presence of life on Mars, resulting in the Mars Viking lander.
Early on, Lederberg recognized genetics as an information science and became increasingly aware of the value of computers. He formed collaborations with researchers at Stanford to create DENDRAL, a prototype artificial intelligence program for analyzing mass-spectrometric data of molecular structures, which led to further programs for disease diagnosis and management.
These wide-ranging interests were a hallmark of Lederberg’s intellect, according to Paul Berg, PhD, emeritus professor of biochemistry and Nobel Prize winner. “What was extraordinary is that he was at home in so many areas,” Berg said. “He made one of the really major discoveries that paved the way for modern genetics, but then he ventured into areas that were entirely different.”
Lederberg stayed true to his teenage promise to aid mankind. Concerned about the public’s awareness of science, he wrote a weekly science column in the Washington Post from 1966-71. Among the topics he addressed were infectious disease outbreaks and biological weapons, both of which were interests that he also pursued through his academic work. He served on national committees for biological weapons and became a national arms control advisor. These interests also led to collaborations with Stanford political scientists and physicists, which eventually resulted in the creation of an undergraduate curriculum in national security and arms control.
Lederberg left Stanford in 1978 to become president of The Rockefeller University. While there, he continued his research and, despite retirement in 1990, continued to work internationally to prevent the use of biological weapons, also serving on the executive committee and as a consulting professor at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).
Over the course of his life, Lederberg was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science, was named an honorary life member of the New York Academy of Sciences, was awarded Foreign Membership of the Royal Society of London and holds the title of Commandeur, L’ordre des arts et des lettres in France.
Lederberg is survived by his wife Marguerite Stein Lederberg, PhD, his son David Kirsch and his daughter Anne Lederberg, and two grandchildren. Funeral services were held Feb. 5.
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Japan's Nationalism: Myth and Reality
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Some observers of Japan have pointed to a dangerous rise in Japanese nationalism. Advocates of that idea claim that this is evident in a number of events, such as, the visits of former Prime Minister Koizumi to the Yasukuni Shrine; former Prime Minister Abe's plan for constitutional reforms and his statements regarding the comfort women; the adoption of "revisionist" history textbooks; the territorial disputes with countries such as China and South Korea; and Japan's efforts to strengthen the Japan-U.S. security arrangements.
However, such observations invite the following questions:
- If there are such signs in Japan, do they reflect Japanese society as a whole? Japan has been strongly pacifistic since the war, avoiding any entanglement in military conflict. This seems to be deeply rooted in the minds of the Japanese people. Just what is the relationship between the purported rise in nationalism and these pacifistic tendencies?
- Most commentators who warn of rising nationalism in Japan fear a return of the extreme nationalism of prewar Japan. However, are not today's political regime, economic institutions and social conditions, all vastly different from those of prewar Japan?
- Even though a trend toward nationalism can be witnessed in some quarters of Japan, it doesn't necessarily mean that Japan has become a country that would take dangerous actions. Nationalistic emotions and movements are not directly linked to the actions of a country. Rather, are there not some intervening factors between them?
Mitsuru Kitano currently serves as minister for public affairs at the Embassy of Japan to the United States in Washington, D.C. where he is in charge of outreach to press/media, intellectual exchanges, art and cultural exchanges as well as support for Japanese language education. Kitano has written a number of op-ed articles, including ones analyzing U.S. opinions about Japan in such papers as the Washington Post, the Washington Times, and the International Herald Tribune.
Minister Kitano is a career diplomat and has been posted in Tokyo, France, Geneva, China and Vietnam since joining Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1980. He has been professionally engaged in Japan's bilateral relationship with the U.S., China and Southeast Asian countries, and Japan's policies regarding the United Nations and other international organizations. He was active also in such areas as economic cooperation and nuclear energy issues.
His academic achievements include being a lecturer at Sophia University (Tokyo) and a senior visiting fellow at RIETI (Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry) in Japan. In 2007, he co-authored a book, Paburikku Dipuromashi: Seron no Jidai no Gaiko Senryaku (Public Diplomacy: Diplomatic Strategy in the Age of Public Opinion) (Tokyo: PHP Kenkyujo).
Minister Kitano received a B.A. from the University of Tokyo in 1980 and a M.A. in international relations from the University of Geneva in 1996.
Philippines Conference Room
Mitsuru Kitano
Minister for Public Affairs
Speaker
Embassy of Japan in the United States
Seminars
Is "Eastern Europe" Disappearing?
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"Eastern Europe" is a concept many political scientists, area studies scholars, and lay people have been using over the years almost by default. But what does "Eastern Europe" mean geo-poltically, culturally, and historically? It is increasingly difficult to define where "Eastern Europe" may or may not be: since the fall of the Soviet Union and the break-up of the Soviet bloc, the term is one that carries a nuance of belonging to the list of losers of globalization, rather than the winners. My contention is that the very notion of "Eastern Europe" is slowly, but surely disappearing. The question that emerges is what are the viable alternatives for talking about and defining this region as it enters into negotiations or joins the EU. What place, if any, does the "East" have in the political agenda of European governments, elites, and the general populace?
Klaus Segbers is Professor of Political Science at Freie Universitat in Berlin. He is the Program Director of the Center for Global Politics and directs a number of the Friei Universitat's innovative graduate studies programs, including East European Studies Online, International Relations Online, German Studies Russia, and Global Politics Summer School China. Segbers conducts research on a range of topics involving contemporary Europe: Germany's foreign relations with Eastern European countries, EU enlargement, the impact of globalization on world cities, elections in Russia, comparative analysis of institutional changes in Russia and China, and an analysis of area studies as practiced in academic settings. Segers is a visiting scholar at the Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies at Stanford University for Winter 2008.
Encina Hall West, Room 208
Klaus Segbers
Professor of Political Science at the Freie Universitat, Berlin, and Visiting Scholar
Speaker
the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (CREEES)
Seminars
2008 Year Ahead Part I: Japanese Society and Culture
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Where is Japanese society and culture headed in the New Year? What social trends may shape Japan's future? From the latest pop culture developments to the changing Japanese attitude toward women and families, our panelists will provide an up-to-date view of Japanese society today and beyond.
Mariko Fujiwara is research director of Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living (HILL). She is also a partner in the consultancy Business Futures Network (London), executive director of Mobile Marketing Inc., and serves on ministerial councils including the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Ministry of Finance, and the Supreme Court. She has published reports on Japanese consumers, Japan's post-war baby boom generation, second baby boom generation, changing roles of women and families, Japan's aging population and emerging trends among senior citizens.
Roland Kelts is the author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S., published in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. He is a lecturer at the University of Tokyo, a columnist for The Daily Yomiyuri and an editor of the New York-based literary journal, A Public Space. His first novel, Access, will be published next year. His articles, essays, and stories have been published in Zoetrope; Playboy; Salon; DoubleTake; The Village Voice; Newsday; Cosmopolitan; Vogue; The Japan Times; among others.
Please visit events at www.usajapan.org or call 415-986-4383 for reservation.
2008 Year Ahead is made possible by the generous support of Union Bank of California
Delancey Screening Room
600 Embarcadero Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
Mariko Fujiwara
Research Director
Speaker
Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living
Roland Kelts
author and journalist
Speaker
Conferences
The Shape of Things to Come: A Global Perspective on Regional Innovation Indicators
In the pursuit to assess high-tech regions' performance in and capability for innovation and entrepreneurship, a bewildering variety of data is published, including:
- employment
- total corporate sales
- wages
- venture capital funding
- new company formation and growth of small firms
- R&D spending
- patents, and many more
However, on the basis of such heterogeneous indicators, it can be difficult or even impossible to compare regions. Some of this is inevitable given different perceived data needs in each region. However, perhaps a common core of data might be supplied.
To this end, the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship is bringing together scholars and researchers from the United States, Europe and Asia to present data from their own regions that would help with comparisons between regions and linkages among them, and to make the case for what they consider the most useful set of indicators.
There will be four workshop sessions: the first will be devoted to discussing a framework for looking at entrepreneurship and innovation regional indicators, and the remaining three will take a regional focus, proposing indicators closely related to innovative regions in the United States, Europe and Asia.
This event is part of the "The Shape of Things to Come" conference at the Fisher Conference Center at Stanford University, January 17-18, 2007.
Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center
Workshops
Savings, Sustainability and Equity
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Kirsten finished her PhD at Stanford’s Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources in 2007. Her dissertation was entitled: Sustainability of Comprehensive Wealth – A practical and normative assessment. In a truely interdisciplinary manner, she combined economics, ethics, and engineering to improve and assess a macroeconomic sustainability indicator. She is currently a Teaching Fellow with Stanford’s Public Policy Program and a Research Associate at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. She teaches classes at the intersection of policy analysis and ethics, leads a seminar on comparative research design, and convenes a weekly environmental ethics working group. Her research interests lie in combining quantitative data with normative argument, to this end, she is co-Investigator on a Woods Institute for Environment grant working with PIs Kenneth Arrow and Debra Satz.
Prior to entering Stanford’s Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources in 2003 Kirsten worked at the World Bank for five years. Her work at the World Bank focused on the environmental impacts of infrastructure projects, remediation of industrial sites, carbon finance, compliance of projects with the World Bank’s environmental and social policies and corporate environmental strategy development. Her projects spanned the globe, including India, Kazakhstan, Dominican Republic, Peru, Colombia and Brazil. She is comfortable holding conversations over a beer or two in French, Spanish and Dutch. For two years, she served as an elected official of the World Bank’s Staff Association board, representing 8,500 staff to management on myriad issues. She won numerous awards at the World Bank and from community groups for her professional achievements and volunteer work.
Kirsten is an environmental engineer trained first at the University of Virginia (BS ‘96) and the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands (MS ’98). More recently, she completed an MS in Applied Environmental Economics from Imperial College of London (’05).
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Kirsten Oleson
Public Policy
Speaker
Stanford University
Workshops
John Hagel and Henry Chesbrough deliver keynote addresses at "The Shape of Things to Come" conference
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"The Shape of Things to Come," a conference presented by the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship on January 17-18, 2008, featured keynotes by John Hagel, co-author of The Only Sustainable Edge and Co-Chairman of the Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation, and Dr. Henry Chesbrough, Executive Director of the Center for Open Innovation at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and author of Open Innovation.
The keynotes bookended Thursday's forum, "New Patterns and Paradigms in Global Innovation Networks," and were a prelude to Friday's academic workshop, "A Global Perspective on Regional Innovation Indicators." Hagel's talk focused on the need for a more explicit taxonomy of innovative collaboration and discussed the "huge need to define pragmatic migration paths"--routes that the average manager and company can take to reach the opportunities that normally are only accessible to cutting-edge companies.
The forum closed with a presentation by Dr. Henry Chesbrough, who provided an overview on the globalization of innovation in the Chinese semiconductor industry, which he sees as split into a "globally oriented, globally competitive" industry segment and a domestically-oriented segment with "backward technologies" and lacking access to capital. The question, he explained, is how China will shift its resources, now entrenched in the latter, to the former, competitive segment.
Chesbrough finished with a discussion of intellectual property rights (IPR) in China, looking at flows of knowledge and current IPR challenges; he mentioned some surprising developments--the rise of businesses to "promote the legal exchange of IP" and the growth of a domestic constituency for stronger IPR--and discussed future implications for IPR in China.
In between the keynotes, the forum featured sessions on innovation in internet services in China, the role of venture capital as a network builder, and discussions on two rapidly moving industries: cleantech and thin film transistor LCD displays.
Conference materials, including presentations and audio files, will be made available on the SPRIE website.
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