Deutsche Welle: French bishops hold day of prayer, fasting for sex abuse victims

French priests and bishops took part in a day of prayer and fasting Monday to plead for forgiveness for the "sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church over the previous months.

Bishop Luc Crepy, who gave the homily during a Mass at the Rosary basilica, said his fellow members of the church will play their part in "this fight against scandalous and criminal actions."

Crepy, who was appointed as the head of a church panel regarding pedophilia earlier this year, announced a series of measures to fight sexual child abuse in the church. "We had to end the guilty silence, which lasted too long, of both the church and wider society and hear the suffering of the victims…we must have the courage to take every measure possible so that the church becomes a safe place," said Crepy.

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The Atlantic: Can Quantum Physics Explain Consciousness?

The mere mention of “quantum consciousness” makes most physicists cringe, as the phrase seems to evoke the vague, insipid musings of a New Age guru. But if a new hypothesis proves to be correct, quantum effects might indeed play some role in human cognition. Matthew Fisher, a physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, raised eyebrows late last year when he published a paper in Annals of Physics proposing that the nuclear spins of phosphorus atoms could serve as rudimentary “qubits” in the brain—which would essentially enable the brain to function like a quantum computer. [...]

Over the past decade, however, growing evidence suggests that certain biological systems might employ quantum mechanics. In photosynthesis, for example, quantum effects help plants turn sunlight into fuel. Scientists have also proposed that migratory birds have a “quantum compass” enabling them to exploit Earth’s magnetic fields for navigation, or that the human sense of smell could be rooted in quantum mechanics.

Fisher’s notion of quantum processing in the brain broadly fits into this emerging field of quantum biology. Call it quantum neuroscience. He has developed a complicated hypothesis, incorporating nuclear and quantum physics, organic chemistry, neuroscience and biology. While his ideas have met with plenty of justifiable skepticism, some researchers are starting to pay attention. “Those who read his paper (as I hope many will) are bound to conclude: This old guy’s not so crazy,” wrote John Preskill, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology, after Fisher gave a talk there. “He may be on to something. At least he’s raising some very interesting questions.”

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Vox: Why more than 80 million Americans won’t vote on Election Day

Consider what happened in 2012. There were 241 million people of voting age, but only 129.1 million actually cast votes for president — a turnout rate of just 53.6 percent. There’s reason to think turnout could be slightly higher in 2016, given the surge of registrations and intense feelings around Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. But America’s turnout rate has been remarkably stable for the past 40 years, and the betting markets don’t seem to think this year will be much different. [...]

So what gives? Why don’t more Americans vote? I put this question to two political scientists who study voter turnout: Donald Green of Columbia University and David Nickerson of Temple University. They pointed to a couple of broad factors at work: [...]

Plus, not all states are actually trying to make it easier to vote. In recent years, states like North Carolina have been going in the other direction and trying to suppress turnout. The ACLU has an interactive graph here showing all the new voter-suppression laws on the books since 2012, from Arizona to Wisconsin to Georgia.

There may be a few other offbeat ideas to try. In one 2006 study, Green and his colleagues found suggestive evidence that turning elections into giant festivals of a sort can boost turnout. Note that in 19th-century America, when turnout was much higher, elections had much more of a festive, whiskey-soaked atmosphere. The idea, presumably, is that throwing a giant party can help cement cultural norms around voting. It’s unclear if this would work on a large scale, but it might be worth exploring.

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The Atlantic: The Four Groups That Will Decide the Presidential Race

The cumulative effect may leave Republicans relying even more heavily on the voters and regions most uneasy about the United States’ cultural and demographic change, or what I’ve called the “coalition of restoration.” Conversely, the election could substantially expand the Democratic advantage among the groups and regions most comfortable with those social changes, what I’ve called the “coalition of transformation.” Whoever wins, the safest prediction is that this election will widen every divide that fractures American politics—along lines of race, education, generation, and geography.

A Clinton victory would mean that Democrats have won the popular vote in six of the past seven presidential elections, or since 1992. That would be unprecedented: No party has won the popular vote six times in seven tries since the formation of the modern party system in 1828. Conversely, a Trump win would measure just how much separates a major portion of the electorate from the leadership class in virtually every American institution, ranging from business to national security to media, in the form of newspaper editorial boards—all of which have coalesced in virtually unprecedented fashion against the tumultuous GOP nominee. [...]

Less clear is how college-educated white men will vote. Many of these ordinarily Republican-leaning voters—the GOP nominee has carried them by double digits in all but three elections since 1980—express skepticism toward both candidates, and polls have varied widely on their preferences. Some late surveys show more of them drifting back toward their usual Republican inclinations, though the ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll as of Saturday showed them breaking about evenly between the two rivals. At the least, Trump appears likely to fall well short of margins of 20 percentage points or more that these men have given the GOP nominee in three of the past four elections.

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Salon: Winds of change: First offshore wind farm in U.S. is scheduled to open this month

he first offshore wind farm in the United States is scheduled to begin operations this month off the coast of Rhode Island — a small but notable step forward, given that other offshore projects have run into stiff headwinds this side of the Atlantic. The five turbines that make up the Block Island Wind Farm will generate 30 megawatts of electricity — enough to power 17,000 homes on average.

It is a surprise (and frustration) to many that the facilities have not cropped up sooner, considering the potential that offshore wind has to reduce long-term dependence on fossil fuels — and to add new power options for coastal cities with limited real estate. In fact, offshore wind has taken off in Europe, producing a total of 11.5 gigawatts a year. Analysts put the United States’ potential at more than 2,000 gigawatts, which is almost double the current electricity use in this country. Yet efforts to launch offshore wind power have fallen short for myriad reasons. For one, electricity distributors have had little reason to pay the higher costs compared with cheaper onshore power sources, such as natural gas and hydroelectric plants. “There is a graveyard of U.S. offshore wind projects that have died after failing to secure a contract for the purchase of its electricity,” said Alex Morgan, a wind energy analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. It does not help that developers currently have to import expensive turbines from Europe or Asia because there is not a homegrown supply chain.

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