Italy moves to quell fears over solar incentives
Italy's government rushed on Friday to quell concerns among banks and investors about the impact of new renewable energy rules on funding for the sector, pledging to reach an agreed solution on new solar incentives.Italy removed a much-feared cap on production incentives for solar power generation in a new renewable energy decree approved on Thursday but included measures which could slow down solar gro
- Wisconsin governor prepares layoffs amid standoff
- Libyan forces fight for town in west, rebels in east |
- UPDATE 4-US Senate to debate rival spending bills next week
- University to investigate live sex demonstration
- WRAPUP 9-Libyan forces fight for town in west, rebels in east
Tories rebrand 'Harper Government' in place of government of Canada
( It's not true I think Harper an Ass. I wouldn't insult the animal with such a comparison. )
What your feet reveal about your health
The brain engineer: Shining a light on consciousness
What we're doing is making genetically encoded neurons that we can turn on and off with light. By shining light on these cells we can activate them and see what they do.
Lab-grown neurons might repair Alzheimer's brains
13:04 04 March 2011
Image via Wikipedia
Alzheimer's disease kills brain cells vital for memory – now we can make new ones from human embryonic stem cells, raising hopes of transplants
Image via WikipediaEmpowered women smoke more
11:24 04 March 2011
In the west, smoking among women has long been associated with empowerment – this pattern looks set to repeat itself in poorer countriesUS syphilis experiment scandal: probes begin
17:26 03 March 2011
Two investigations will inquire how researchers deliberately infected Guatemalans with syphilis in the 1940sGenetic treatment closes door on HIV
17:14 03 March 2011
HIV may be thwarted by genetically altering blood cells to remove the "door handle" by which the virus invades the cellsAntarctic ice may be more stable than we thought
A new study by David Sugden at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and colleagues suggests the ice sheet may be more stable than we thought. They studied the Heritage range of mountains near the central dome of the west Antarctic ice sheet. Specifically, the researchers looked at blue-ice moraines, where winds erode the ice in topological depressions, exposing the rocks beneath.
They analysed the moraine for beryllium isotopes produced by cosmic radiation, which accumulate in the rock when it is exposed. Sugden's team found evidence that the moraines had been forming for at least 200,000 years, suggesting that ice has covered the area for at least that long (Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, DOI: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2011.01.027), and therefore survived the last interglacial 125,000 years ago.
Don't expect this to be the final word on the matter. A recent study by Robert Kopp at Princeton University (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature08686) suggests sea levels were 8 to 9 metres higher than now during the last interglacial, in part due to the west Antarctic ice sheet melting. If Sugden's team is correct, that amount of sea level rise would be unlikely.
Working out who is right is a "frustrating and intriguing scientific riddle that we'd love to unravel", says Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University in University Park.
( I would guess they've treated the amount of water on the planet as a constant...but is it ? For that matter, is the size of the planet a constant ? )
Libya goes offline as nation's servers flatline
The U.S. war on Manning
Hastings writes that Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, the commander of NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan, illegally employed psychological operations to manipulate visiting U.S. senators into providing more troops and funding for the war effort.
Arrest of CIA Agent Sheds Light on American Covert War in Pakistan, Straining U.S.-Pakistani Relations (Part II)
U.S. officials have admitted an American detained in Pakistan for the murder of two men was a CIA agent and a former employee of the private security firm Blackwater, now called Xe Services. Up until Monday, the Obama administration had insisted Raymond Davis was a diplomat who had acted in self-defense.
( Reading the interview, I was struck by the thought that likely all three were undercover operatives. A 'criminal record' is actually routine in the business, depending on where one is working. )
Democracy Now! ( Creative Commons Reg'd )
Leaked EPA Documents Expose Decades-Old Effort to Hide Dangers of Natural Gas Extraction
Last year, the EPA planned to call for a moratorium on fracking in the New York City watershed, but the advice was removed from the publicly released letter sent to officials in New York. The news comes as the EPA is conducting a broad study of the risks of natural gas drilling, with preliminary results scheduled to be delivered next year.
In the autumn of 2008, there was so much natural gas drilling wastewater being dumped into municipal treatment plants along the Monongahela River near Pittsburgh, and these plants were not designed, constructed or maintained in any way to take out the very high salt content, the toxic chemicals associated with petroleum, or the radioactive nucleotides. And so, this contamination was going into the river in such incredible volumes that essentially it impacted a 70-mile stretch of the river, and 850,000 people didn’t have any drinking water. Subsequent studies show that actually the water became brackish. They started to find salt-loving diatoms flourishing in the water.
WALTER HANG: I think that the thing that most impressed me was how you could read these technical recommendations from the scientists within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and they recognize—they said it right there in the documents—these are elevated concentrations of toxic radionucleotides. And there has to be a program, essentially not only to protect the environment, protect the public health, but actually to protect the workers. And so, they made their recommendations. They were totally blunt: you have to regulate what’s called the flowback wastewater, which is what they use to fracture the rock, and then it comes back up out of the well. But they also said you have to regulate what’s called the brine. And this is the wastewater that comes out of the well for the entire lifetime of the well. And a Marcellus Shale horizontally fracked well can produce for 30 years. So they were very clear. They really recognize that the levels were high. They recognize that there was a lot more data. But again, as was noted in the Times piece, they came right up against the issue of the politics, of the money.
So again, for the first time, you can see a PowerPoint that was made to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency headquarters on August 9th, 2009. You can see exactly what this EPA scientist, Amy Bergdale, presented to the powers that be at the top. You can see how she talked about the radionucleotide hazard. You can see how she identified a mine void dumping. So not only were they spreading this on the roads, they were actually dumping it into abandoned mines that weren’t equipped to, again, break down or remove the radionucleotides, the toxics, the high salt. And most importantly, she revealed this problem in 2008 along the Monongahela River. So I invite all of your listeners, go to the New York Times website, look at these documents, or look at some of the selected documents that Toxics Targeting has posted. You can read them, and we’ve highlighted the sections that are the most telling. And it’s just unbelievable. I mean, people are going to be shocked. They’re going to just be so angry that the government tried to do the right thing and then basically ran up against the barriers of internal politics.
Brazil court reverses Amazon Monte Belo dam suspension
It has long been a source of controversy, with bidding halted three times before the state-owned Companhia Hidro Eletrica do Sao Francisco was awarded the contract last year.
Celebrities such as the singer Sting and film director James Cameron have joined environmentalists in their campaign against the project.
They say the 6km (3.7 miles) dam will threaten the survival of a number of indigenous groups and could make some 50,000 people homeless, as 500 sq km (190 sq miles) of land would be flooded.
Antarctic ice sheet built 'bottom-up
Survey data collected from the middle of the White Continent shows liquid water is being frozen on to the bottom of the sheet in huge quantities.In places, this deeply buried add-on layer is hundreds of metres thick and represents about half of the entire ice column, researchers say.The discovery is reported online in the journal Science.Project leaders confess to being astonished by the findings."It's jaw-dropping, I have to say," said Professor Robin Bell from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory."The first time I showed the data to colleagues, there was an audible gasp," she told BBC News.The new data will add to the understanding of how the ice sheet expands and moves, which in turn will inform researchers as they try to grasp how Antarctica might change in a warmer world.
It is well known that ice sheets grow from the top down, as snow settles on the surface and is compacted over thousands of years.But the new findings illustrate clearly how the sheet can also grow from the bottom up by accumulating layers of liquid water.Sub-glacial water can be maintained in a liquid state at the bottom of the sheet, either by the intense pressure of the overlying ice or by being in contact with the warmth of the bedrock.But if the water is forced up valley sides to locations of lower pressure, or into ponds in places away from retained heat in rocks, then it will rapidly turn to ice - and can stick to the bottom of the sheet above.The survey data reveals that this add-on ice makes up 24% of the ice sheet base around Dome A, a 4.2km-high plateau of ice that represents the greatest elevation on the continent.And in some other places, this refreeze phenomenon accounts for slightly more than half of the total ice thickness.That means in these locations, ice is being created faster on the bottom of the sheet than it is being accumulated through snow deposition on the top.'
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