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Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

21 Oct - Early News Picks

Early morning view of amphitheatre and buildin...Image via Wikipedia
Killer Algae: Key Player In Mass Extinctions
Today, just about anywhere there is water, there can be

toxic algae.
 The microscopic plants usually exist in small concentra-
tions, but a sudden warming in the water or an injection 
of dust or sediment
 from land can trigger a bloom that kills thousands of fish,
 poisons 
shellfish, or even humans.
James Castle and John Rodgers of Clemson University think
 the same thing happened during the five largest mass 
extinctions in Earth's history. Each time a large die off 
occurred, they found a spike in the number of fossil algae 
mats called stromatolites strewn around the 
planet. Castle will be presenting the research on October 
19 at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of 
America in Portland,Oregon.

"Algae growth is favored by warmer temperatures," Castle
said. "You get accelerated metabolism and reproduction of
effect appears to be enhancedfor species of toxin-
producing  cyanobacteria."
He added that toxic algae in the United States appear to be
migrating slowly northward through the country's ponds

and lakes, and along the coast as temperatures creep 
upward. Their expanding range portends a host of
 problems for fish and wildlife, but also for humans, as algae
 increasingly invade reservoirs and other sources of 
drinking water.
New Report Details Historic Mass Extinction 








Of Amphibians; Humans Worsen Spread Of 

Deadly Emerging Infectious Disease  

Aug 12,2008

Amphibians,reigning survivers of past mass extinctions,
are sending a clear , unequivocal signal that something is

wrong, as their extinction rates rise to unprecedented
 levels, according to a paper published by the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Humans are
exacerbating two key natural threats – climate change 
and a deadly disease that is jumping from one species
 to another.
Amphibians are among the oldest organisms on Earth, having survived the last four mass extinctions. The current extinction rate of amphibians is cause for alarm, according to biologists.
"An ancient organism,which has survived past extinctions, is telling us something is wrong right now" Vredenberg said. " We--humans-- may be doing fine right now,but they are doing poorly, The question is, really, whether we'll listen before it's too late."








The land would equal almost half the acreage otherwise 
expected to disappear during that period, a 
new study shows.For decades, sea-level rise, land subsidence, and a decrease in river sediment have caused vast swaths of the Mississippi Delta to vanish into the sea.
The anticipated build-up of new land in a portion of
 the delta, as simulated by a computer model, could
 compensate for a large fraction of the expected 
future loss, protect upriver areas from storm surges,
 and create fresh-water habitat. 
Tanker collision spills 18,000 gallons of oil off



















PR Executive James Hoggan on “Climate Cover-Up: 

The Crusade to Deny Global Warming”

In August, the American Petroleum Institute—the oil
 industry’s top lobbying group—was found to have 
asked member oil companies to help recruit 
employees, retirees and contractors for anti-climate
 bill rallies around the country.



















Canadian National Railway orders 70 

new high-horsepower locomotives

CN said the new locomotives are 15 to 20 per cent
 more fuel efficient than the ones they replace, and
 comply with regulations for lower exhaust 
emissions.
The new locomotives will be equippedwith distributed power
capability,which improves the efficiency of the trains 
through smoother starts and improved braking.


Deserted shopping mall bleak symbol of Fed bailout

OKLAHOMA CITY, Oct. 21, 2009 (Reuters) — A $29 billion trail

 from the Federal Reserve's bailout of Wall Street investment 

bank Bear Stearns ends in a partially deserted shopping center 

on a bleak spot on the south side of Oklahoma City.




















Another Lesson Not Learned From the 

Financial Crisis: Business People in Charge of 

Compliance

On Sunday, McClatchy posted a very thought-

provoking analysis of the actions of Moody’s 

Investors Service that contributed to the financial 

crisis last year. Inherent conflict of interest, where 

it is the issuers of debt who are paying for the 

analysis of its risk,rather than the purchasers paying 

for the analysis then played out to its obvious 

conclusion.

Option in House Bill

Daily Health Care News – 10/21/09


( I only see political stories )
Making Millions Promoting Drugs With Little Oversight

Clay Shirky points us to a column from a few 
months back by Marcia Angell, which explains why 
clinical research on drugs isn't even remotely
 trustworthy, as it all-too-often seems to involve 
doctors who have serious conflicts.As the relation-
ship between doctors and pharma has gotten deeper
 and deeper, it means that the results of those all 
important "clinical trials" -- which the pharma sup-
porters always insist are so important -- are highly 
suspect.
Because drug companies insist as a condition of 
providing funding that they be intimately involved 
in all aspects of the research they sponsor,they can
 easily introduce bias in order to make their drugs 
look better and safer than they are. Before the 
1980s, they generally gave faculty investigators 
total responsibility for the conduct of the work, but 
now company employees or their agents often 
design the studies, perform the analysis, write the 
papers, and decide whether and in what form to 
publish the results. Sometimes the medical faculty 
who serve as investigators are little more than hired
 hands, supplying patients and collecting data 
according to instructions from the company. 




Exclusive: U.S. Spies Buy Stake in 
Firm That Monitors Blogs, Tweets
America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep

track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book
 reviews on Amazon.
In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelli-
gence community, is putting cash intoVisible Technologies,
a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media.
It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get
 better at using ”open source intelligence” — information
that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV
shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and
radio reports generated every day.
Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day,
scraping more than a million posts and conversations
taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter
 and Amazon. 
Light switch could boost network speeds
A new breed of optical switch could vastly increase internet data speeds.
The high-speed backbone of the internet is based on networks of glass optical fibres. But this is too fragile and expensive to install in the small distances between local exchanges and the home – the so-called last mile, where connections running over copper wires persist.A cheaper alternative is to use plastic optical fibre (POF),but this has been unable to transmit data with the kind of speeds that would make it worth replacing copper.
That may soon change. In recent years, POF with a bandwidth of 1 gigabit per second over 100 metres has been demonstrated. Now Polycom, a European Union-funded collaboration between researchers across Europe, has shown how to squeeze more data into a POF,bringing it a step closer to the market. 
Attack shuts all Pakistan schools 
Pak Taliban Spooked by Drones, Insider Account Shows 
“The drones killed many senior commanders and hindered their operations. Yet the Taliban were able to garner recruits in their aftermath by exaggerating the number of civilian casualties,” he writes. “The strikes also created a paranoia among the Taliban. They believed that a network of local informants guided the missiles. Innocent civilians were rounded up, accused of working as American spies and then executed.”















Spiraling Flight Of Maple Tree Seeds Inspires New Aerial Surveillance Technology
Clark School students studied maple seeds and developed a new 
design incorporating the natural flight of the tiny flyers. The insight 
gleaned from this study enabled the creation of the world's smallest 
controllable single-winged rotorcraft. The maple seed-inspired design is
 valuable because when dropped, unpowered, from a plane and then 
controlled remotely, it can perform surveillance maneuvers for defense, 
fire monitoring and search-and-rescue purposes.

















The Clark School researchers made use of research and testing tech-
niques developed at the school's Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center to
develop the maple seed-inspired device.The aerodynamic and geometric
 properties of natural samara were studied in detail. The insight gleaned
 from this study enabled the creation of the world's smallest controllable
 single-winged rotorcraft.
The vehicle has been demonstrated at University of Maryland events, the
 American Helicopter Society Annual Forum,the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy
 Air and Space Museum, and at the 100th anniversary of the College Park
 airport.





Oath Keepers Say They’re on Patrol in Iraq















In July, the SPLC also presented Congress with 
growing evidence that extremists are infiltrating the
 U.S. military and urged Congress and the military to
 take steps to ensure that the armed forces are not 
inadvertently training future domestic terrorists.



















Gates pushes Japan on U.S. troop shift plan

Japan is host to about 47,000 U.S. military personnel
 as part of the decades-old security alliance. Analysts
 say the troops' forward deployment is critical to the
 American military presence in the region.

The troop realignment pact is meant to reduce the 
U.S. military "footprint" on Okinawa while improv-
ing the ability of the two forces to cooperate.

Central to the deal is a plan to shift a U.S. Marine 
air base on Okinawa to a less crowded part of the 
island. 



Poland ready to take part in Obama missile 

defense

Russia has welcomed his decision to shelve the 
Bush missile shield plan, which Moscow had regard-
ed as a direct threat to its own security. 
It is awaiting more details on the new missile 
defense plans but says they are less worrisome.


( I would love a Russian citation on that. It's 
radically different than past reports on the 
Bush plan. )


New Media and the Challenge 
of UN Reporting
 January 30, 2008. The South African Ambassador to the UN
 at that time, was Dumisani Kumalo. Kumalo told the Security
 Council, "My delegation believes that silence on the situation 
in the Middle East is more dangerous than even meetings 
where there might be a raising of temperatures or heat."

He was responding to a comment by the British Ambassador

 Sir John Sawers, who proposed that perhaps it was better not
 to have debates in the Security Council on the Middle East 
since these issues brought up expressions of strong differences
 among the delegates.
.....
Some member nations of the UN claimed the
closure of 

the 
border crossings into Gaza was an action contrary to
 the obligations of Israel as an occupying power in the Gaza
 Strip. Another member of the Security Council, notably the US,
 said that the issue was that Israel was under siege* and it was
 not appropriate for the Security Council to condemn Israel's 
actions. Instead the US wanted a statement to condemn the 
rocket attacks being fired into Israel as coming from "terrorists".
( * Common claim. Nuclear armed Israel is therefore 

threatened by caged prisoners deprived of water and blockad-
ed from receiving aid supplies...in their own country.  It's 
notable that the U.S. is so conspicuous  a promoter of 
international lawlessness. That's what indefinite imprisonment, 
torture, theft and murder are, after all. I guess after so many 
invasions and air assaults a country becomes blasé. )


REPORT ; Death Penalty Enormously Expensive , No Clear Benfits



ScienceDaily (Oct. 20, 2009) —A naturally produced
 molecule called resveratrol, found in the skin of red
 grapes, has been shown to lower insulin levels in 
mice when injected directly into the brain, even 
when the animals ate a high-fat diet.




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