The Power of Gratitude: It's About What
You Have, Not What You're Going to Get
With the hustle and bustle of everyday
life, it's easy to forget about what and
who you're grateful for.
June 28, 2013
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Sy Perlis, 91, recently broke a nearly
decade-old World Association of Benchers
and Deadlifters record in the
90-and-over age division
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Perlis didn’t begin weightlifting until
he was 60 years old, and he entered his
first competition when he was in his
mid-80s
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Regular exercise, even initiated late in
life, offers profound health benefits
including chronic disease prevention,
boosts to muscle mass and even
protection against memory loss
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Age is not an impediment to staying
physically active. If anything, the
older you are the more important regular
exercise becomes
Five years after being
elected president and six
months after winning a
second term, President Obama
today gave his first speech
devoted solely to climate
change and announced several
executive actions to begin
weaning the United States
(historically the largest
emitter of greenhouse gases)
off fossil fuels.
The fight isn’t over yet.
Some states want to ban
filming of factory farm
abuses—and fracking
operations as well!
Cold-blooded barbarity
reflects US policy.
Democracy’s more illusion
than reality. Rule of law
principles don’t matter.
They’re systematically
spurned. Dissent’s
increasingly targeted.
Freedom’s imperiled. Obama’s
ruthless. He exceeds the
worst of George Bush. He’s
waging war on truth-tellers.
He targeted more
whistleblowers than all his
predecessors combined.
Arizona Attorney General Tom
Horne presented the
principal Friend of Court
Brief, joined in by three
other states, which urged
the U.S. Supreme Court to
eliminate the law requiring
pre clearance of all voter
effected laws. This law had
applied only to a limited
number of states, including
Arizona. Today, the Court
eliminated that
requirement.
With 90-95 percent of the
territory's only aquifer
contaminated by sewage,
chemicals and seawater,
neighborhood desalination
facilities and their public
taps are a lifesaver for
some of Gaza's 1.6 million
residents.
"Maybe hot-topic debates
would be settled more
successfully if we all
focused more on what WE need
to change about ourselves
instead of how OTHERS need
to change themselves."
New nuclear reactors in Britain will be
backed by government guarantees, the
Chancellor announced.
George Osborne said: "We're restarting
our civil nuclear programme when other
countries are unable to continue theirs. Now
we provide guarantees for new nuclear."
Canada does not think there
would be a net increase in
carbon emissions if
TransCanada Corp builds its
proposed Keystone XL
pipeline from Alberta's oil
sands to Texas, Natural
Resources Minister Joe
Oliver said on Tuesday.
TV News in Atlantic Canada
reports that a Cure For
Cancer is found and it has
been censored just like Dr
Buzinski’s Cure for Cancer
from Houston, Texas.
However, there is no patent on this drug.
Since there is no patent on DCA and no
pharmaceutical company owns this drug, CTV
reported that drug companies will not want
to bring this drug out on the market or
conduct studies on this drug due to the fact
that they can’t make a profit off a drug
that can be inexpensively produced.
President Obama on Tuesday directed the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to
establish carbon pollution regulations for
coal-fired power plants, a move that could
affect San Juan County's two plants.
Four Corners Power Plant and San Juan
Generating Station each rank among the
nation's top carbon polluters.
If somebody kicked in your
front door at 3 a.m...
And was rushing up the
stairs to kill you, would
you be able to quickly stop
the threat?
With prescription drug abuse on the rise
– to the point where it’s becoming more of a
problem than street drug use (i.e. cocaine,
heroin, methamphetamines) – why in the world
are some members of Congress fighting for a
bill that would literally make it harder for
you to take natural supplements than
something chemically-based for which you
need a doctor’s written permission?
At
this point, your guess is as good as mine.
The motion of the inner core
has never before been
detected or measured. The
finding, reported July 18 in
the journal Nature,
will likely advance
understanding of how the
Earth's magnetic field is
created and why it reverses
periodically; how heat flows
through the planet, and how
the Earth's multi-layered
interior has evolved.
"There is heated debate
about the advantages and
disadvantages of DC, and
several myths that still
need to be debunked in order
for this class of power
distribution equipment to
become mainstream," ...
As coal-burning power
plants and industrial
facilities across the United
States seek solutions to
comply with more
stringent EPA (Environmental
Protection
Agency) regulations to
reduce their mercury
emissions by 90 percent over
the next few
years, enviraPAC's proprietary
technology is poised to be a
major part of the solution
to this challenge.
“America needs to know EPA
is employing appropriate
scientific methods for its
water quality testing,” said
Milito. “EPA has to do a
better job because another
fatally flawed water study
could have a big impact on
how the nation develops its
massive energy resources.”
The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA)
recently released results of
a survey showing that $384B
in improvements are needed
for the nation’s drinking
water infrastructure through
2030 for systems to continue
providing safe drinking
water to 297 million
Americans.
A proposal in front of the
New York City Council would
allow the city's sanitation
commissioner to establish a
voluntary residential
organic collection pilot
program.
This is a watershed moment
in our nation’s history.
Today, climate change is a
real and growing threat to
America and the rest of the
world. It’s indisputable.
Climate change threatens
our economy, our future
progress, our health and
safety, and even our way of
life. Every day, the
Earth suffers a little
President Obama's new climate change
agenda seems to spell the eventual end of
coal-fired power plants in America.
But new findings released Wednesday could
offer a path to survival for the fuel, which
still provides about 40 percent of the
nation's electricity.
With a countywide moratorium
on any new solar projects
set to run out in
approximately a month, San
Bernardino County has
received a grant that could
help speed up the permitting
process for those same
projects.
Researchers with the Clean
Energy Project will ask
volunteers from IBM's World
Community Grid to create a
"virtual supercomputer" for
studying millions of
chemical compounds in order
to to identify those
suitable for harvesting the
sun's energy more
efficiently.
This all-natural protein
melts away the
brain-clogging mineral that
triggers memory loss,
dementia and Alzheimer's --
and cuts brain cell death
in half!
And yet
this Nobel Prize-winning
discovery is being ignored
by 99% of doctors.
Thoughts of outrage,
unfairness, disbelief, and
ultimately grief consumed me
while I was doing this
investigation. A list
of ingredients that are
banned across the globe but
still allowed for use here
in the American food supply
recently made news. While I
have written about some of
those ingredients before,
this list inspired me to
look a little deeper and
find out how pervasive this
issue is for us. Could
these banned ingredients be
contributing to the higher
mortality and disease rates
here in the U.S.?
One of the advocates for raw
milk wrote about his
experience in lobbying the
General Assembly this past
week, and noted that one of
the opponents of
legalization was a dairy
farmer who worried that raw
milk would give "a black eye
to his industry."
This went along with people
citing the usual parts
of scientific studies about
all the "dangers" of
allowing people to choose
for themselves what they put
in their bodies.
It
is important to note that
many of the most significant
scientific studies actually
DO NOT come down 100%
against raw milk
legalization.
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Lab tests show that ice from UK branches
of McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC,
Starbucks and other fast food
restaurants contains more bacteria than
the water found in the restaurants’
toilets
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Similarly, tests conducted in 2008 found
that two-thirds of all restaurant lemon
wedges were contaminated with 25
different types of disease-causing
bacteria -- including fecal bacteria
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While none of the samples presented an
immediate health risk, four of them
contained high enough levels to be
considered a “hygiene risk,” the
laboratory warned
Although the fires are of immediate
concern at the regional level, they are
quite disconcerting at the global scale.
The fires originate in one of Earth's
carbon super-sinks: peat swamps. Hidden
underneath Sumatra's lowland rainforests are
thousands of years of partially-rotted tree
trunks, branches, and leaves which never
fully decomposed after their submersion into
water. This dark under-world has the
potential to become an inferno when exposed
to air and ignited. Thus, as Indonesia's
peatlands are drained and burned, one of the
world’s greatest long-term carbon sinks is
being transformed into a rapid carbon
source.
The Keystone XL pipeline got
a boost on Tuesday as a
landmark U.S.-mandated
report said heavy Canadian
oil is no more likely to
cause pipeline leaks than
other crudes, knocking back
one of the biggest
objections to the project.
Under the Recovery Act, the
Department of Energy's
Office of Electricity
Delivery and Energy
Reliability received
approximately $4.5 billion
to modernize the electric
grid, $80 million of which
was designated for the
Interconnection Transmission
Planning Program to
facilitate the development
or strengthening of
capabilities in each
interconnection -- Western,
Eastern and Texas. The
Department also allocated
$60 million to five
organizations under
cooperative agreements to
perform work for the
interconnections and $20
million to the Department's
national laboratories to
provide technical support to
those organizations.
U.S. and its allies not
interested in solving
nuclear standoff, Supreme
Leader Ali Khamenei says in
first remarks on talks since
presidential election.
The Nano-Falcon easily sits
in the palm of your hand
The Kroger Co., the grocery retail giant,
committed to moving all of its retail
locations toward zero waste in its seventh
annual sustainability report released June
26.
The company plans to increase its
diversion rate to 65% at all store locations
by 2013, and to 70% by 2015, the report
said. Kroger's current diversion rate is
58%. Zero waste is often defined by a 90% or
better recycling rate.
It seems that the nation has
decided to let the flight of
capital out of the country
devalue the currency,
possibly to "improve"
competitiveness. Inflation
has not been a major problem
thus far, so why not enter
the currency war? Just
follow Japan's example ...
"We need to find a way to
use all of our resources in
the most efficient manner
and aggregate them together,
whether it is natural gas or
nuclear or coal of
hydroelectric or wind power
or solar or any number of
developing and new
technology," Cope said. "We
need a national policy that
uses them all in the most
economically viable manner."
To make a Harry Potter-style
invisibility cloak requires
the use of materials that
have what's known as a
negative refractive index
over all optical
wavelengths, from red to
violet. However, the
artificially-structured
optical materials from which
cloaks are made thus far
have been restricted to a
very narrow range of optical
wavelengths, limiting their
ability to cloak over a
range of colors. That
obstacle to progress looks
to be at an end...
Seventy percent of full-time Americans
working stiffs have either mentally “checked
out” at work or purposefully sabotage the
company’s productivity.
Well, aren’t we a bunch of sad saps?
NASA's Van Allen Probes
mission has discovered a
previously unknown third
radiation belt around Earth,
revealing the existence of
unexpected structures and
processes within these
hazardous regions of space.
The National Grid's own
figures suggest that the
effect on carbon emissions
of wind intermittency is
actually less than a tenth
of a percent of the overall
benefit of wind power.
Shale gas will likely
turn out to be a valuable
resource for many countries,
but on the basis of present
evidence, not as valuable as
sometimes believed. For
instance, China, Poland and
France also possess large
deposits of this resource,
but as far as I know the
decision makers in those
countries have not informed
their foot soldiers that
they are on the fringe of a
shale gas bonanza that - at
the very least - will
restore the shine to their
macroeconomic expectations.
A new subduction zone
forming off the coast of
Portugal heralds the
beginning of a cycle
thatwill see the Atlantic
Ocean close as continental
Europe moves closer to
America.
The findings of a new study in the
journal Groundwater suggest that methane
concentrations in Susquehanna County water
wells in Pennsylvania can be explained
without the migration of Marcellus shale gas
due to hydraulic fracturing.
"Testing of 1,701 water wells in
northeastern Pennsylvania shows that methane
is ubiquitous in groundwater...
A study published in the
science journal Nature,
highlights the discovery
that large-scale upwelling
within Earth's mantle mostly
occurs in only two places:
beneath Africa and the
Central Pacific. Although we
witness large shifting
events as the result of
subduction zones producing
earthquakes, volcanoes, and
tsunamis - somehow Earth
manages a way to keep from
flipping.
Confusion, skepticism, anxiety and
dramatically increased health costs —
welcome to the new world of ObamaCare.
You may not know this, but open
enrollment in ObamaCare exchanges begins in
just three short months.
Two southern lawmakers in
one of West Virginia's more
prolific coal districts
denounced President Obama's
latest assault on the
industry as a "cancer" and
"borderline criminal."
A recent decision by the AMA
may have a dangerous ripple
effect.
One of the main reasons
doctors have been reluctant
to prescribe obesity drugs
is that obesity drugs are
currently not covered by
Medicare, and most insurance
companies take their
coverage cues from Medicare.
Since the AMA has such sway
with the government, its
classification of obesity as
a disease may well end up
influencing what Medicare
will cover (which also
benefits the AMA, since they
establish the billing codes
in line with what Medicare
will cover).
President Barack Obama today
will present his
three-pronged plan to deal
with climate change – reduce
carbon emissions, prepare
the United States for the
impacts of climate change,
and lead global efforts to
fight it.
The wide array of power industry interest
groups and analysts wasted little time in
giving their assessment on President Obama’s
plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from
power generation.
One major coal-burning utility stressed
that the devil will be in the details, while
a Wall Street analyst said there really
wasn’t much new or unexpected when the
president outlined his plan June 25 at
Georgetown University.
C1 event. There are
currently 5 numbered sunspot
regions on the disk. slight
chance for an M-class flare
on days one, two, and three
(28 Jun, 29 Jun, 30 Jun).
Solar wind speed 478 km/s.
The geomagnetic field has
been at quiet to unsettled
levels for the past 24
hours. The geomagnetic field
is expected to be at quiet
to minor storm levels on day
one (28 Jun), quiet to
unsettled levels on day two
(29 Jun) and quiet levels on
day three (30 Jun).
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Antibiotic resistant disease is a major
threat to public health, and the primary
cause for this man-made epidemic is the
widespread misuse of antibiotics—both in
medicine and agriculture
-
Researchers have discovered that gut
viruses known as bacteriophages, a.k.a.
“phages” are instrumental in conferring
antibacterial resistance to bacteria
-
Under normal conditions, phages help you
stay healthy by destroying harmful
bacteria and encouraging beneficial
bacteria to flourish in and on your body
-
According to a new study, low doses of
silver can make antibiotics up to 1,000
times more effective, and may even allow
an antibiotic to successfully combat
otherwise antibiotic-resistant bacteria
-
Statin drug users should avoid the
antibiotics clarithromycin and
erythromycin, as these antibiotics
inhibit the metabolism of statins,
increasing your risk for muscle- or
kidney damage, and even death
The campaign to demonize
Edward Snowden, whose
revelations about the
National Security Agency’s
ubiquitous and ongoing
spying on the American
public has the Obama
regimein furious disrray,
has taken on a new dimension
– now they’re going after
Glenn Greenwald, the
Guardian reporter and
columnist Snowden chose to
tell his story. Glenn has
already preempted some of
this in his Guardian
column, but there is sure to
be more. What’s interesting
about this effort is that it
tells us far more about the
smear-merchants – and who
they serve – than it does
about Greenwald.
Whatever the sun tracking
system technology, it calls
for precise, robust and
maintenance-free motion
systems. To do so Sonceboz
has recently launched an
application-specific
electric actuator that can
be combined with gears and
sensors in order to create
the optimum sun tracking
system.
What characterizes the beginning stages of
an empire in decline? Is it war, famine,
disease, moral decay, or all of the above?
There is perhaps no clear formula or single
event that can be used to pinpoint when a
civilization begins to fall and yet, it must
seem obvious to many living at the time.
So, let's ask the question: How about the
U.S.? Is it on the verge of falling apart?
As part of Tesla's ongoing
efforts to keep on Model S
drivers on the road and away
from the plug socket, the
company has demonstrated a
battery swapping service
that takes a mere tick over
90 seconds – and is
hands-free to boot.
The American “shale boom” is
poised to revolutionize
global energy markets. It
could transform the nation
from a longtime net oil
importer into an export
powerhouse. Consider that
the 2012 increase in
U.S. crude oil production,
announced last week, was the
largest not just in U.S.
history but the world.
Researchers have been
looking for a way to convert
carbon dioxide into methanol
in a single step using
energy-efficient processes
for years.
Université Laval
researchers have developed a
highly effective method for
converting CO2 into
methanol, which can be used
as a low-emissions fuel for
vehicles.
It has been two months since
Tennessee Valley Authority
(TVA) shuttered its solar
programs, but TenneSEIA,
Tennessee's Solar Energy
Industries Association,
views the situation as far
from over.
The United States Army has
announced to reduce its
strength by a whopping
80,000 by 2017 as part of a
budget-cutting plan, making
it one of the largest force
reductions since World War
II.
The U.S. Energy Information
Administration (EIA)
estimates that in 2011, the
United States emitted 5.5
metric gigatons (billion
metric tons) of
energy-related carbon
dioxide (CO2), while the
global emissions of
energy-related CO2 totaled
31.6 metric gigatons. The
potential exists for the
United States to store an
average 3,000 (but up to
3,700) metric gigatons of
CO2 in geologic basins
throughout the country,
according research by the
U.S. Geological Survey
(USGS)
Under a $30.4 billion
spending bill approved by
the House of
Representatives’
Appropriations Committee
this week, nuclear energy
programs would receive $656
million in fiscal 2014, down
13.5 percent from this year
and well below the
administration’s request,
according to the Nuclear
Energy Institute.
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It's long been known that calorie
restriction can increase the lifespan of
certain animals. More recent research
suggests that intermittent fasting can
provide the same health benefits as
constant calorie restriction, which may
be helpful for those who cannot
successfully reduce their everyday
calorie intake
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“Undernutrition without malnutrition” is
the only experimental approach that
consistently improves survival in
animals with cancer, and extends overall
lifespan by about 30 percent
-
Both intermittent fasting and continuous
calorie restriction have been shown to
produce weight loss and improve
metabolic disease risk markers. However,
intermittent fasting tends to be
slightly more effective for reducing
insulin resistance
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Besides turning you into an efficient
fat burner, intermittent fasting can
also boost your level of human growth
hormone (aka the “fitness hormone”)
production by as much as 1,200 percent
for women and 2,000 percent for men
Good news if you are feeling
a little fuzzy headed; a
single, 20-minute session of
Hatha yoga can help improve
the ability to maintain
focus and take in, retain
and use new information.
June 25, 2013
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Research spanning 60 years shows gluten
grain consumption leads to higher
prevalence of both neurological and
psychiatric problems, and schizophrenia
in particular
-
In a recent study, researchers compared
the blood work of 950 schizophrenics
with 1,000 healthy controls. The odds
ratio of having anti-gliadin IgG
antibodies was 2.13 times higher in
schizophrenics, indicating that t the
least schizophrenics are more likely to
experience an adverse immune response to
wheat proteins
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The discovery of antibodies to gliadin
in the blood of both celiac disease
patients and schizophrenics implies that
the wheat protein gliadin does not break
down during digestion, wheat proteins
stimulate auto-immunity, and may cause
your immune system to attack your
nervous system
About 95 gallons of radioactive water
leaked from a desalination unit at the
disabled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power
plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Friday.
While not revealing the water's radiation
level, TEPCO said the water did not escape
the complex, Kyodo News reported.
-
Following an episode of the Dr. Oz Show
that detailed the dangers of mercury
amalgam fillings the American Dental
Association (ADA) announced they had
ended their affiliation with Sharecare,
a consumer website co-founded by Dr. Oz
-
As the world rallies around the obvious
necessity of replacing mercury-based
products with non-toxic alternatives,
the ADA continues to shill for mercury
fillings
-
The ADA is a former patent-holder of
amalgam, and has helped draft woefully
misled policy statements affirming that
dental amalgam is "safe" and its
contribution to environmental mercury
contamination "minimal” – despite
overwhelming evidence to the contrary
Construction of the largest
solar energy array in the
U.S. Air Force will begin at
the end of June on Tucson's
Davis-Monthan Air Force
Base. The 14.5-Megawatt
Photo Voltaic Array Project
will see 57,000 solar panels
cover two sites on 170 acres
of unusable land on base.
The project is expected to
be fully operational by
mid-December and to save the
base $500,000 per year in
energy costs. The base
currently pays 8.6 cents per
kilowatt-hour of
electricity,..
New York is anticipating
more solar installed in 2013
than ever before in the
Empire state and in New York
City. In 2012, the NYC solar
market grew by 85 percent
over the previous year and
is projected to continue on
a rapid upward trajectory
based on the significant
number of new PV
applications that were filed
so far in 2013.
41 000 years ago, the
Earth's magnetic field faded
and practically disappeared,
leaving our planet
unprotected from the
bombardment of cosmic rays.
The Earth's magnetic field
forms an efficient shield
that deflects charged
particles of cosmic origin
headed for Earth. Far from
being constant, the magnetic
field has undergone many
reversals, with the North
magnetic pole shifting to
the South geographic pole.
According to the Malthusian
theory of population,
population increases in a
geometrical ratio, whereas
food supply increases in an
arithmetic ratio. He was
wrong because technology
pushed improvements in yield
at a far faster pace than
population could grow. Still
the idea is simple: There is
only so much food that can
be produced and if
population grows then some
one will starve Crop yields
worldwide are not increasing
quickly enough to support
estimated global needs in
2050, according to a study
published June 19 in the
open access journal PLOS ONE
by Deepak Ray and colleagues
from the Institute on the
Environment (IonE) at the
University of Minnesota.
Is the advanced discussion
happening there now part of
the future for American
voters and lawmakers?
Germany has gone farther
than any other large
industrial economy in
decarbonizing its power
sector. Already it derives
more than 20 percent of its
electricity from clean
sources, and it's aiming to
reach 80 percent by 2050.
But the sheer scale of its
Energiewende, or
"energy transition," has
caused skeptics here and
abroad to question whether
those goals are really
attainable.
As a source of continuous or
prime power, diesel
generator sets (gensets)
have traditionally been the
leading baseload distributed
generation (DG) technology
-- particularly during power
blackouts. One of the least
expensive, most reliable DG
technologies available
today, diesel gensets have
expanding opportunities
among homeowners and
mission-critical commercial
facilities requiring power
24 x 7. According to a
recent report from Navigant
Research, worldwide revenue
from diesel gensets will
reach $41.2 billion by 2018.
Three recent studies paint a
bleak picture about both the
health risks and the
prevalence of bisphenol A
(BPA), a known endocrine
disruptor. A Dutch study
has found that fetuses of
mothers who have high levels
of BPA in their systems grow
more slowly, have smaller
heads, and weigh 20% less at
birth compared with babies
born to women with the
lowest BPA levels.
Earth's magnetic field is
generated by what is known
as the "dynamo or dipole"
theory which involves the
convection of liquid iron in
the outer core. The latest
data continues to show
Earth's magnetic field is
weakening. Ongoing studies
supported by the NSF
(National Science
Foundation) indicate a
connection between submarine
troughs (rifts), Earth's
mantle, and Earth's outer
core. New research
illustrates the shifting of
magnetic flux, via Earth's
magnetic field - has a
direct and symbiotic
relationship to Earth's
outer core, mantle,
lithosphere, and crust.
A company out of Spain
called Platinum Invests
Group Corporation S.A.,
headed by Dr. Umberto
Stranieri, appears to have
an exotic free energy
generator system they call
E-MAG that involves magnetic
propulsion. They appear to
be approaching market
readiness.
House Republicans outlined a pared-back
energy and water budget Monday that would
cut as much as $873 million from renewable
energy programs — on top of what was cut
already in the March sequester.
The cumulative impact is a nearly 50
percent reduction from what Congress had
approved only months ago,..
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has vowed
to shake a few things up at the Energy
Department (DOE) — but the agency’s support
for solar power is not one of them.
Moniz put strong faith in solar power...
One of the biggest concerns
with many forms of renewable
energy is their inability to
store active
energy during times
when the sun isn't out, or
when the wind isn't
blowing. With these
energies gaining popularity
and growing at an impressive
rate, it seems as though
establishing an efficient
form of energy storage is a
foregone conclusion for the
future.
Development allows
battery to be charged once a day, every day,
for 27 years.
Researchers at Germany’s Center for Solar
Energy and Hydrogen Research
Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) claim to have made
improvements to lithium-ion batteries that
allow them to be recharged up to 10,000
times while still retaining 85% of charging
capacity.
With a Senate vote on
President Barack Obama's
nominee to head the
Environmental Protection
Agency still in limbo,
speculation is rising about
the fate of a proposed
emissions rule for new power
plants that was scheduled to
have been finished in April.
This factsheet provides the
number of “green” jobs in
the United States as well as
a more specific
consideration of employment
in the renewable energy and
energy efficiency sectors.
According to Environmental
Entrepreneurs, in 2012 alone
the clean energy sector
created 110,413 jobs. Job
figures in renewable energy
and energy efficiency were
obtained by referring to
studies and reports
published by the Department
of Energy, the Bureau of
Labor Statistics and a host
of non-profits, think tanks
and national trade
associations.
Arizona Public Service
Company's $294 million
purchase of two units at
Four Corners Power Plant is
on hold following action by
the Arizona Corporation
Commission to pursue
electricity deregulation in
that state, according to a
federal regulatory filing.
Grassroots activists say
they feel 'betrayed' by
mainstream environmental
organizations that helped
write the state's new
fracking regulations.
Mainstream environmental groups in
Illinois celebrated last month after state
lawmakers approved a bill regulating
fracking—a bill the environmental groups
themselves had helped write in a unique
collaboration with the fossil fuel industry
and politicians.
Local grassroots groups, however, want
fracking in Illinois stopped altogether, not
simply regulated with legislation. They are
not only protesting the law, but also their
one-time allies.
The latest report from
the ISI Group called the
recent outflows from bond
funds "a bit of a panic".
Indeed after years of
growth, the drop in fixed
income funds' AUM is nothing
short of spectacular.
Some insist that this is
more of a "rotation" than a
panic. A possible way to
settle the argument is by
looking at the Credit Suisse
Risk Appetite Index. One of
its components is the Fixed
Income Risk Appetite
sub-index, which in fact
just entered the "panic"
mode for the first time
since 2011.
Brown kelp macroalgae — the
strange, foul-smelling
seaweed so often found
washed up on the Pacific
Northwest’s volcanic sand
beaches — could ultimately
offer an almost unlimited
global supply of
commercial-quality ethanol
or biomethane.
Federal investigators are
asking the public to help
solve middle-of-the-night
crimes that left ruined
fields of genetically
engineered sugar beets in
rural Jackson County.
Intense global competition
and a potential crisis of
over-supply among producers
have forced the solar
industry to improvise at
many levels to keep it
stable and develop new
growth opportunities,
according to Germany Trade &
Invest, a foreign trade and
inward investment promotion
agency.
According to NOAA
scientists, the combined
average temperature over
global land and ocean
surfaces for May 2013 tied
with 1998 and 2005 as the
third warmest on record,
since record keeping began
in 1880, at 1.19°F above
the 20th century average of
58.6°F.
Urine Tests Show Europeans
have this Weed Killer in
Their Bodies
-
Tests show that people in 18 countries
across Europe have glyphosate in their
bodies. Of the urine samples tested, an
average of 44 percent was found to
contain glyphosate; 70 percent of
Germans, Britons, and Polish tested
positive
-
Researchers have determined the
mechanism by which glyphosate residues
in food disrupt normal body functions
and induce disease; the pathway
glyphosate uses to kill plants also
exists in human and mammals’ gut
bacteria
-
Glyphosate has estrogenic properties and
promotes breast cancer in the
parts-per-trillion range. Meanwhile, the
EPA proposes raising allowable residue
levels in certain vegetables from 0.2 to
as high as 6 parts-per-million
-
The phytoestrogen genistein, naturally
found in soybeans, has been found to
heighten the estrogenic effects of
glyphosate, prompting the warning that
genetically engineered soybeans may
therefore pose a breast cancer risk
-
A new EU-US free trade agreement has
again cracked the door open for
genetically engineered (GE) crops and
foods into Europe
For the past two weeks,
Google has been petitioning
the government to allow it
to publish the exact number
of data requests it receives
from the NSA. There's not
been a lot of progress made
on that front, but now
Google is pulling out the
big guns in attempt to force
transparency.
"The 3% Solution: Driving
Profits through Carbon
Reduction," demonstrates
that if US businesses act
now to reduce emissions by
an average of 3% annually,
they can save up to $190
billion in 2020 alone, or
$780 billion over 10 years.
-
While the American agricultural system
is the envy of many less affluent
nations, it is a food system that
promotes subsidized cheap food largely
devoid of nutrients and chockfull of
unhealthy ingredients that has caused
obesity rates to skyrocket
-
There is no relationship between
agricultural subsidies and nutrition.
The government’s nutritional guidelines
are in large part mirrored by these same
agricultural subsidies, rather than
being built upon sound nutritional
science
-
92 cents of each food dollar now goes to
someone other than the farmer—it’s
actually spent on the various
manufacturing and packaging processes
associated with processed foods
-
My food pyramid for optimal health is
almost the inverse of the original USDA
food pyramid, featuring healthful fats
and vegetables on the bottom, followed
by high quality proteins, fruits, and
lastly, grains and sugars, which are
ideally eliminated
The city's climate
adaptation projects should
be devised to handle
conditions far worse than
even the most severe sea
level rise estimates,
scientists say.
Japan's nuclear utilities
face shareholders this week
promising restarts of idled
plants as soon as next month
after costly safety
upgrades, plans that look
wildly optimistic given they
are yet to secure either
regulatory or local
approval.
Malaysia declared a state of emergency in
two parts of the southern state of Johor on
Sunday, as smoke from land-clearing fires in
Indonesia pushed air pollution above the
level considered hazardous.
The illegal burning of forests and other
land on Indonesia's Sumatra island, to the
west of peninsular Malaysia and Singapore,
to clear space for palm oil plantations is a
chronic problem during the June-September
dry season.
U.S. mayors pledged Monday
to make their communities
more resilient to
increasingly severe floods,
droughts, extreme storms and
wildfires, which they said
was more efficient and
cost-effective than disaster
clean-up afterwards.
US 30yr mortgage rates
spiked to a 2-year high on
Friday (4.49%).
NASA will launch its newest
solar observatory on June
26. The Interface Region
Imaging Spectrograph, or
IRIS, mission will send a
spacecraft to orbit around
the Earth to study how solar
energy is created and
transferred throughout the
star.
The initiative would
probably include limits on
greenhouse gas emissions
from power plants, an idea
that could prompt a battle
in the courts and Congress.
The Tennessee Valley
Authority in coming months
will start building a new
30-year power generation
plan -- one that puts more
emphasis on nuclear power
and less on coal -- and
environmental groups are
urging openness at the
start.
Celebrity chef Paula
Deen admits that she used
the word nigger “a
very long time” ago in
strictly private
conversations, and she, like
so many others, is
immediately banned from
broadcasting, but team owner
Dan Snyder is not only
responsible for the repeated
use of the word "redskins"
on hundreds of radio and TV
stations, but is so proud of
it that he publicly vows he
will "never" change the
team’s name. Why? What's
different?
An innovative energy-storage company back
from bankruptcy is building a plant in
Northeastern Pennsylvania to store
electrical power in speedy spinning
flywheels.
Beacon Power L.L.C. on Friday will
install the first of 200 flywheels in a
nondescript industrial park near Hazleton.
Half of all Americans
consider environmental
impacts when deciding
whether or not to buy a
product at least
occasionally, according to a
new nationally
representative survey on
attitudes toward climate
change conducted by the Yale
Project on Climate Change
Communication and the George
Mason University Center for
Climate Change
Communication.
Power outages in the
Canadian oil capital of
Calgary could last for weeks
or even months, city
authorities said on Sunday,
as record breaking flood
waters moved downstream to
threaten smaller communities
in southeastern Alberta.
Many health practitioners today are
advising patients to take proteolytic
enzymes to help with everything from
inflammation and autoimmune conditions to
heart disease and plaque.
Some doctors have even suggested its use for
the treatment of cancer.
“On a war footing” India has mobilized
military and civilian emergency personnel to
rescue tens of thousands of people stranded
outdoors in mountainous forests due to
unseasonably early monsoon rains, flash
floods and landslides.
More than 550 people have died as four
times the usual amount of rainfall swept
across 40,000 square kilometers (15,440
square miles) of northern India this week.
Myanmar is blessed with an
abundance of natural
resources and a youthful
workforce, but with many of
its people living in extreme
poverty, the newly opening
economy is attracting the
interest of investors and
aid workers alike.
According to the latest
issue of FERC's "Energy
Infrastructure Update" with
data through May 31, 2013,
renewable energy sources
accounted for 28.7% of all
new in-service electrical
generating capacity in the
U.S. for the first five
months of 2013. Wind led the
way with 958 Mw followed by
solar (881 MW), biomass (116
MW), hydropower (72 MW), and
geothermal (14 MW). However,
natural gas accounted for
4,097 MW of new capacity or
57.7% while coal and waste
heat provided 925 MW (13.0%)
and 30 MW (0.4%)
respectively. Oil and
nuclear power had no new
capacity added.
C9 event observed.
There are currently 6
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk. Solar
activity is expected to be
low with a chance for
isolated M-class flares on
day one (25 Jun) and
expected to be low with a
slight chance for an M-class
flare on day two (26 Jun)
and likely to be low with a
slight chance for an M-class
flare on day three (27 Jun).
The geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet to
unsettled levels on days one
and two (25 Jun, 26 Jun) and
quiet to active levels on
day three (27 Jun). Protons
have a chance of crossing
threshold on day one (25
Jun), have a slight chance
of crossing threshold on day
two and three (26-27 Jun).
Mr. Rossi assured all of the readers of
his blog, the Journal of Nuclear Physics,
that his new partner shares his philosophy
and commitment to making and marketing this
amazing new form of alternative energy.
Once the third party reports were
released, and the manufacture of the E-Cats
was assured, commenters on the JONP asked
Mr. Rossi if he would remain active in work
with the E-Cat. Andrea Rossi assured them
all that the E-Cat is an indelible part of
his life, and that would remain active in
the Research & Development.
The settlement also requires BPU to
reduce emissions at its Nearman coal-fired
power plant by 2017 and invest $750,000 in
energy efficiency programs for local
residents.
The settlement resolves allegations from
the Sierra Club, which said in 2012 it
intended to sue BPU for more than 9,000 air
pollution violations at the power plants.
-
Sitting for extended periods of time is
an independent risk factor for poor
health and premature death. Even if you
are very fit, if you uninterruptedly sit
for a great percentage of the time,
you’re still at an increased risk of
dying prematurely
-
Research by the NASA scientist
responsible for monitoring the
astronauts, shows your body declines
rapidly when sitting for long periods
-
Simply standing up over 30 times a day
is a powerful antidote to long periods
of sitting and is more effective than
walking
-
There are virtually unlimited
opportunities for movement throughout
the day, from doing housework or
gardening, to cooking and even just
standing up every 10 minutes
-
It’s not how many hours of sitting
that's bad for you; it’s how often you
interrupt that sitting that is GOOD for
you
South Korea said multiple
government and private
sector websites were hacked
on Tuesday's anniversary of
the start of the Korean War,
and Seoul issued a
cyberattack alert warning
officials and citizens to
take security measures.
Several systems are in use
for measuring the intensity
of solar flares. Older
systems are based on the
appearance of the flare
through ground-based
telescopes, while newer ones
use data from spacecraft.
The biggest flares are known
as "X-class flares" based on
a classification system that
divides solar flares
according to their strength.
The smallest ones are
A-class (near background
levels), followed by B, C, M
and X. Similar to the
Richter scale for
earthquakes, each letter
represents a 10-fold
increase in energy output.
So an X is ten times an M
and 100 times a C. Within
each letter class there is a
finer scale from 1 to 9.
Production costs for
industry-leading Chinese
crystalline-silicon (c-Si)
PV module manufacturers --
such as Jinko Solar,
Renesola, Trina Solar and
Yingli Green Energy -- will
fall from 50 cents per watt
in the fourth quarter of
2012 to 36 cents per watt by
the end of 2017, according
to a new 112-page report
from GTM Research.
With long days of sunshine now upon us,
there's no better time to consider switching
to a solar-power system to save on energy
bills.
But before you decide on a system, it's
important to investigate the energy
efficiency of your home, according to the
University of Missouri Extension.
Oh, so there's a problem with
releasing excess carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere from burning fossil fuels?
OK, no big deal, we'll just use that CO2
to make some carbon-neutral biofuel, sound
good?
That's the claim being presented by
researchers at the University of Georgia
(UGA) in an article posted by Bio Fuel
Daily.
Taliban militants stormed
the presidential compound
Tuesday after bluffing their
way past two checkpoints,
triggering a gunbattle that
left eight attackers and
three guards dead and sent
journalists attending an
official event scrambling
for cover, officials and
witnesses said.
Tesla Motors, Inc., unveiled
plans Thursday night to
offer a service that would
swap out depleted batteries
in its luxury electric cars
for fully charged packs.
Recent discoveries suggest
charged particles and their
interplay with Earth's
magnetic field has an effect
far beneath the Earth's
surface. Researcher Denis
Andrault, a mineral
physicist at Blaise Pascal
University, was recently
published in the scientific
journal 'Nature'. His
research shows mantel plumes
form narrow streams of
molten rock which
horizontally expand as they
rise to the surface.
The cause of heartburn is
not too much stomach acid,
as is widely believed – it’s
not enough. That’s the
revelation from Dr. Jacob
Teitelbaum, author of the
best-selling book “Real
Cause, Real Cure.” Those
reflux drugs and antacids
you’re taking may be doing
more harm than good, he
tells Newsmax Health.
Case law and common
sense tell us we determine
our own standards for
citizenship. Yet, it can’t
be the law that a tribal
government can anoint people
at random to exist outside
of great chunks of state
law. Well, why not? Isn’t
the power to define our
citizens “plenary”?
"Vegetables and fruits don't die the
moment they are harvested," said Rice
biologist Janet Braam, lead researcher of
the study.
Once picked, produce can continue to
metabolize and survive independently for
some time. Even when they are cut, their
cells remain active and alive.
"They respond to their environment for
days...
For the first time,
scientists have documented
that thirdhand smoke – the
noxious residue that clings
to virtually all surfaces
long after the secondhand
smoke from a cigarette has
cleared out – causes genetic
damage in human cells.
The mountains of East
Tennessee are getting back
to being more smoky and less
smoggy because the Tennessee
Valley Authority has spent a
combined $5.3 billion since
the 1970s curtailing air
pollutants created at its 11
coal-burning power plants,
TVA officials say.
CSP in the United States
faces a crucial year, with
the Department of Energy
adamant that visible
benefits from five new
plants under construction,
plus millions of dollars in
research funding, will
offset the freezing of its
loan guarantee programme.
The Agriculture
Department has approved a label for meat and
liquid egg products that includes a claim
about the absence of genetically engineered
products.
It is the first
time that the department, which regulates
meat and poultry processing, has approved a
non-G.M.O. label claim...
A dramatic and surprising
magnetic effect of light
discovered by University of
Michigan researchers could
lead to solar power without
traditional
semiconductor-based solar
cells.
There are no clear federal
guidelines for chemical
exposure at oil spills, and
no studies to understand the
long term dangers to human
health.
Mortgage rates have run
higher since May 1, climbing
more than 1 percentage point
for some conventional loans,
and VA home loans. Not since
2009 have mortgage rates
moved by this amount, this
quickly.
The suit that state and
federal officials recently
filed could signal they are
especially upset with
Exxon's conduct. It could
also be politics as usual.
Global stock markets reeled
Monday amid concerns that
credit conditions will
tighten in the U.S. and
China, the world's two
largest economies.
June 21, 2013
Officials of Karzai's
government, angered by the
opening of a Taliban
political office in Doha on
Tuesday, said the United
States had violated
assurances it would not give
official status to the
insurgents.
The man who helped push
through bad gun laws this
spring is being recalled by
more constituents than
actually even voted in his
election! An election to
replace him should take
place in September or
October
President Obama is as
thoroughly fenced in by his
scandals as Richard Nixon
ever was. The scandals that
are engulfing him hurt him
badly with both the younger
voters who have been his
political base and the older
voters he has sought to woo.
And, the media scandals are
destroying his image with
his political mainstay: his
popularity with the press.
Hot summer weather is setting records in
Anchorage.
The high of 84 degrees Tuesday set a new
mark for July 8, breaking an 84-year-old
record. It also turned out to be the warmest
day ever recorded in Anchorage for the month
of July, topping the 83 degrees reached July
11, 1953, said Dave Vonderheide, a
meteorologist for the National Weather
Service.
Nearly two years ago, Beacon
Power had the wind knocked
out of it. But it has
emerged from bankruptcy, all
after the energy storage
company had won a loan
guarantee provided by the
Obama administration. Now,
on Friday, it will install
its first storage device at
a pending Pennsylvania-based
project.
An electromagnetic pulse
(EMP) over the United States
could end modern life in
America overnight. Whether
caused by an enemy attack (a
nuclear device detonated
above the atmosphere) or by
a natural phenomenon (a
geomagnetic storm), an EMP
can cause entire regions of
the country to lose
electricity—permanently.
Despite the EMP Commission’s
recommendations in 2004 and
2008, hardly any progress
has been made in protecting
the country from an EMP
attack and its catastrophic
results. The U.S. must
prepare to deal with an
EMP—now.
Biologists are worried about
a twofold problem:
Commercial fishing is
reducing their food source,
and climate change is
causing fish to seek colder
waters, according to a
bulletin released Tuesday by
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.
Brazil awoke Friday to city
centers still smoldering
after a night that shocked
the nation: 1 million
anti-government protesters
took to the streets in
scores of cities, with
clusters battling police and
destroying swaths of
storefronts and government
buildings.
The Huntington Beach
Desalination Project would
create 50 million gallons of
drinking water per day, and
construction is also
underway in Carlsbad for a
similar Poseidon
desalination project.
News that was NOT
announced publicly by the
United States government,
that is.
In an
unprecedented agreement, the
U.S. Treasury has agreed to
give China direct access to
its auctions.
Per the
deal, China is allowed to
bypass Wall Street, and
purchase Treasury Bills
without placing any bids
through primary dealers.
The deal wasn't
announced publicly or in any
message to primary dealers.
It is remarkable that
China's central bank has
been unable or unwilling to
contain the spike in
short-term rates, as the
interbank liquidity squeeze
continues. This is roughly
the equivalent of the Fed
not being able to control
the fed funds rate. You can
certainly have fluctuations,
but within a couple of days
a major central bank should
be able to inject enough
liquidity into the system to
bring down rates - unless of
course the central bank
wants the rates higher.
Chinese authorities have
given courts the powers to
hand down the death penalty
in serious pollution cases,
state media said, as the
government tries to assuage
growing public anger at
environmental desecration.
Innovation is the key to the
future and central to the
expansion of renewable
sources of energy. There are
a number of innovations that
could radically transform
the clean energy equation.
Although renewable energy is
growing exponentially around
the world these sources of
power have a number of
shortcoming that make it
difficult to scale-up so
that they can replace dirty
energy sources like fossil
fuels
If detonated in the high
atmosphere, a nuclear weapon
releases a massive burst of
electromagnetic radiation
that causes electronic
systems to produce crippling
current and voltage surges.
Such blasts are known as
EMPs...
In terms of the West's
defence against such a
weapon, Mr Schnurr stated
that it was "just at the
thinking and planning" stage
and more action needed to be
taken.
There was no incident. Nor
were any evacuations taking
place. The group was
participating in an
emergency exercise meant to
hone their skills and build
"muscle memory" associated
with monitoring and
decontaminating evacuees and
emergency crews potentially
exposed to radiation, said
Fire Chief Scott Liebold.
"The primary goal is
preparedness. None of us do
this every day."
Energy companies are
demanding more industrial,
development and
manufacturing space around
shale plays, as well as
larger office footprints in
hub locations to accommodate
a growing workplace, JLL
says. Growth in the domestic
energy industry is expected
to create more than 3.5
million American jobs by
2035, including 700,000 in
the next two years alone,
according to IHS Global
Insight.
One of the biggest concerns
with many forms of renewable
energy is their inability to
store active
energy during times
when the sun isn't out, or
when the wind isn't
blowing. With these
energies gaining popularity
and growing at an impressive
rate, it seems as though
establishing an efficient
form of energy storage is a
foregone conclusion for the
future.
“The survey released today
shows that the nation's
water systems have entered a
rehabilitation and
replacement era in which
much of the existing
infrastructure has reached
or is approaching the end of
its useful life,” EPA
Assistant Administrator Bob
Perciasepe said in a
statement.
The amount of municipal
solid waste in the United
States remained flat for
2011, but the nation's
recycling rate inched
upward, according to
statistics released today
from the U.S. EPA.
The Electric Power Research
Institute (EPRI) has
developed an analytical tool
that quantifies the value
and assesses the cost
effectiveness of energy
storage, enabling utilities,
regulators and other
stakeholders to determine
the economics of energy
storage and better assess
its viability and role in
their systems. The effective
deployment of energy storage
technology can potentially
improve grid reliability and
resiliency, reduce frequency
or size of rate increases,
and support the effective
grid integration of wind and
solar energy.
The European Parliament's
Environment Committee backed
a sweeping ban on the use in
fridges and air conditioners
of fluorinated gases -
greenhouse gases that are
many thousands of times more
damaging than carbon
dioxide.
Finance ministers in
Luxembourg will try to
resolve one of the most
difficult questions posed by
Europe's banking crisis -
how to shut failed banks
without sowing panic or
burdening taxpayers.
A Christian group once committed to
reforming people from their homosexuality
has recanted that aim.
For 27 years, Exodus International has
tried to turn thousands of gay men and women
straight through a combination of prayer and
intensive therapy. Late in the day
Wednesday, the group’s leader, Alan
Chambers, posted an extensive apology for
the trauma he caused by promoting the
misguided cause.
In written testimony
submitted Tuesday to the
House Committee on Energy
and Commerce, the Army Corp
of Engineers announced the
department will not
undertake a full
programmatic Environmental
Impact Statement (EIS) on
permit applications for coal
exports at ports in
Washington and Oregon.
Anti-coal groups, the
Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA), and various
elected officials had
requested that the entire
lifecycle of coal - from
extraction, to transport, to
eventual usage in Asia - be
considered in the EIS
covering a single port
project.
The director of the FBI now
says his agency is using
drones in the skies above
America -- and with good
reason. Jeff Glor reports on
the new confirmation of
government surveillance on
domestic soil.
The IRS is set to pay
roughly $70 million in
employee-union bonuses,
contrary to an Obama
administration directive to
halt such rewards amid the
deep, government-wide budget
cuts known as sequestration.
No doctors, nurses or
corpsman have balked at
feeding the prisoners or
even voiced a concern about
the military's policy of
using what's known as
enteral feeding to prevent
any of the hunger strikers
from starving to death, said
Navy Capt. Robert Durand.
A gun control group that
sought to raise awareness to
their cause at a New
Hampshire rally by reading
off the names of 4,500
people killed by firearms
since the Connecticut school
shootings drew jeers when
they included the name of
Boston Marathon bomber
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, according
to a report.
To accelerate the
development of renewable
energy resources, Hawaiian
Electric Company (HECO),
subsidiary of Hawaiian
Electric Industries, Inc.
(NYSE: HE), has asked the
Public Utilities Commission
for permission to negotiate
with five proposed projects
that could quickly provide
low-cost electricity for
Oahu.
When we hear about monsoons,
we often think about the
rainy phase of a season
usually occurring in
tropical climates. Even
though monsoons are
associated with much more
than just rainfall, as
global warming occurs, these
complex systems will have
several repercussions for
precipitation.
Iranian President-Elect
Hassan Rowhani swept to
victory in the country's
June 14 election with 50.7%
of the vote and a clear
mandate for change.
He also offered direct talks
with the United States on
condition that Washington
acknowledge Tehran's nuclear
rights and pledge not to
interfere in Iran's domestic
affairs.
High levels of a toxic
substance called
strontium-90 have been found
in groundwater at the
devastated Fukushima nuclear
power plant in Japan, the
utility that runs the
facility said on Wednesday.
Google “Guatemalan
genocide” and you’ll find in
Wikipedia a description that
characterizes it as a civil
war between the government
and leftist rebel groups
made up of predominantly
Mayan Indians and poor
peasants. This is pretty
typical for how aggression
against indigenous
populations in all of Latin
America has been framed in
news and other literature
since the 1950’s. The
applied terms are “civil
war,” not colonization. They
are “leftist rebels”
fighting legitimate
governments, not indigenous
peoples protecting
territories and their rights
to exist against settler
oligarchies and foreign
business interests. This
kind of terminology reflects
the manipulative,
propagandistic language of
Cold War-era hysteria where
communism was the evil force
to be eradicated, and was
often a front for despotic
leaders in collusion with
transnational corporations,
all in the name of
democracy.
Two New York state men have
been charged in a bizarre
plan to develop a mobile
X-ray system that would be
used from afar to silently
kill people that they deemed
"undesirable," federal
officials said.
We've received an e-mail recently with the
following question (paraphrased):
"I am a US-based retail investor. I
have no positions in emerging
markets - why should I care about
places like Brazil or China?"
The Los Angeles City Council
on June 18 adopted an
ordinance banning the use of
plastic bags at grocery
stores, pharmacies,
convenience stores and some
retailers in the city.
The recent rise in
U.S. Treasury yields and
speculation surrounding
possible changes in the
Fed's bond buying program
have highlighted the
potential risks faced by
U.S. banks in a rising rate
environment, according to
Fitch Ratings. A sustained
increase in interest rates,
potentially signaling an end
to the prolonged low rate
environment that has
hampered bank margins, could
have a meaningful impact on
capital and bank earnings.
Global markets tumbled on
Thursday over concern about
a credit crunch in China and
uncertainty about the United
States central bank’s plans
for withdrawing the monetary
stimulus upon which the
American economy has become
dependent.
Differences between Martian
meteorites and rocks
examined by a NASA rover can
be explained if Mars had an
oxygen-rich atmosphere 4000
million years ago -- well
before the rise of
atmospheric oxygen on Earth
2500m years ago.
-
According to the latest statistics, one
in five children between the ages of 3
and 17 suffer some form of mental
disorder, loosely defined as “serious
changes in the ways children handle
their emotions, learn, or behave”
-
The most prevalent mental health problem
among three- to 17-year olds is ADHD,
affecting nearly seven percent of
children and teens
-
Autism spectrum disorders are most
prevalent among six- to 11-year olds.
The latest statistics show that 1 in 50
children in the US now fall within the
autistic spectrum, up from 1 in 88 just
last year, with a 5:1 boy to girl ratio
There may be killer
asteroids headed for Earth,
and NASA has decided to do
something about it. The
space agency announced a new
"Grand Challenge" today
(June 18) to find all
dangerous space rocks and
figure out how to stop them
from destroying Earth.
The new indictment of former
executive David Rainey adds
language suggesting he knew
of the congressional probe
he was charged with
obstructing when he provided
false information soon after
the spill to members of the
House Committee on Energy
and Commerce, including
about the rate that oil
flowed from the ruptured
Macondo well.
The stepmother of a Vermont
man who shot a Hudson Falls
man to death Sunday said her
stepson was defending his
family.
Uncertainty regarding
natural gas and crude oil
prices remains the primary
concern of upstream U.S.
energy companies for the
second consecutive year...
About 50 people protested
Wednesday against the
proposed Duke Energy rate
hike, saying that the
utility company's plan will
hurt elderly and poor
residents who cannot afford
to pay higher power bills,
and will continue the
company's harmful effects on
the environment...
Several protesters, called
the Raging Grannies, sang
about their disgust with the
measure.
Since 2006, Team Bush, and
then Team Obama, have
allowed the little-known,
hugely powerful National
Security Agency to run a
daily dragnet through your
and my phone calls — all on
the hush-hush, of course,
not informing us spyees. Now
exposed, leaders of both
parties are piously pointing
to the Patriot Act, saying
that it legalized this
wholesale, everyday invasion
of our privacy, so we
shouldn't be surprised, much
less upset by NSA's
surreptitious peek-a-boo
program.
In 2010 the EPA proposed a
regulation to treat coal ash
as a hazardous material.
This legislation would
remove the stigma associated
with recycling coal ash by
removing the potential for a
hazardous material
designation and set federal
standards for disposal of
coal ash for the first time.
..
"Without this legislative
action, coal ash will
continue to be disposed
based on standards from the
1950-s and 1960-s," said
Rep. McKinley.
C1 event observed.
There are currently 7
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk. Solar
activity is expected to be
low with a chance for
M-class flares on days one,
two, and three (21 Jun, 22
Jun, 23 Jun). The
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at unsettled
to minor storm levels on day
one (21 Jun), quiet to
active levels on day two (22
Jun) and quiet to unsettled
levels on day three (23
Jun).
New housing
construction in the US has
increased substantially
since the lows of the Great
Recession, but remains near
pre-recession lows.
Of 23 confirmed cases in
April, 15 people died — an
“extremely high” fatality
rate of 65 percent,
according to Johns Hopkins
senior epidemiologist Trish
Perl, a member of the team
that analyzed the spread of
the virus through four Saudi
hospitals.
Migratory shorebird
populations are at great
risk from rising sea levels
due to global climate
change, warns a recent paper
in Proceedings of the Royal
Society B. These birds play
an important role in the
distribution of nutrients
within wetland and coastal
ecosystems, and their loss
could have unknown
consequences for the rest of
the world.
The U.S. Senate has dropped
a House-approved plan that
would prepare the United
States to defend itself from
an attack from any
electromagnetic pulse source
– whether it would be from a
natural solar flare or the
detonation of a
space-located nuclear weapon
by enemies intent on
destroying America’s
infrastructure, according to
a representative who has
raised alarms over EMP.
Illinois Senator Durbin is
planning to reintroduce his
supplement bill, the Dietary
Supplement Labeling Act (S
1310), which would grant
more power to the FDA to
regulate dietary supplements
like they were drugs; Durbin
first introduced S 1310 in
2011, but it failed
miserably, as have many of
his other attempts to pass
laws attacking the
supplement industry
Shale oil production is not
large enough to make a
difference in world supply
and tip the balance in
global markets, according to
Mesirow Financial's Deputy
Chief Economist Adolfo
Laurenti, although it is
advancing rapidly.
Our sun, in spite of its
steady appearance to the
naked eye, is not a stable
star. Every 22 years, along
with the appearance of
numerous sunspots, it begins
a period of intense magnetic
storms. While these storms
rage across the face of our
sun, giant plumes of hot gas
and magnetic energy are
ejected in every direction,
sometimes directly at
the Earth. A single one
second flare can carry as
much as one sixth of the
sun's total energy.
Although most flares are not
large, some are powerful
enough to rip away enormous
chunks of solar mass. These
pieces of our star (called
Coronal Mass
Ejections(CMEs)), become
huge globes of magnetized
plasma, moving through space
at fantastic speeds
Last week, NASA observed the largest
solar flare of the year. The coronal mass
ejection was one “powerful enough to cause a
brief radio blackout.”
Indeed, there were some small instances
of radio interference last week following
the solar flare. While the event made for
some spectacular photographs, it also drew
attention to the fact that the nation is
still unprotected from an electromagnetic
pulse (EMP). Addressing the life-threatening
danger posed by an EMP is vital to national
security.
When it's in flight, there's no roar of
jet engines. It's strangely quiet. And as it
crisscrosses America, the spindly plane
doesn't use a drop of fuel. By day, and even
by night, it flies on the power of the sun.
And it's that fact that has the U.S.
energy secretary, and the plane's two pilots
and fans around the world, so excited.
The American solar
photovoltaic (PV) industry
has grown tremendously in
recent years. In 2012, more
than 3,300 MW of solar power
were installed throughout
the United States, with a
record 1,300 MW installed in
the last three months of the
year alone. Falling costs
for hardware and
installation have
accelerated this trend, but
it has mainly been driven by
public policies that
generously reward those who
install solar systems.
What happens when you
combine Fifty Shades of
Grey with
fundamentalist Christianity?
“Spanking for Jesus” — or a
movement known as Christian
Domestic Discipline. The
alternative lifestyle fell
into the media spotlight on
Wednesday thanks to The
Daily Beast and Jezebel.
After a year of service, the
117-mile Sunrise Powerlink
transmission line linking
San Diego to the
renewable-rich Imperial
Valley is even more valuable
today than it was when it
went online one year ago.
The Environmental Protection
Agency is obliged under the
Clean Water Act to monitor
America’s waterways and
shield them from the toxic
runoff from factory farms.
But the growth of that
industry, and its courtroom
tenacity, has far
outstripped the E.P.A.’s
efforts to restrict runoff
from manure lagoons and
feedlots.
Jim Yong Kim said there was 97 to 98
percent agreement among scientists that
global warming was real and caused by human
activity.
"If you disagree with the science of
human-caused climate change you are not
disagreeing that there is anthropogenic
climate change. What you are disagreeing
with is science itself," Kim told a Thomson
Reuters Newsmaker event in London.
... NRC inspections in late
2012 and early 2013
identified at least three
instances in which TVA was
unable to prove that the
equipment had been tested
and certified for the higher
reliability standard.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon has called for a collective global
response to drought and a shift from crisis
management to drought preparedness and
resilience. He said the price for
preparedness is minimal compared to the cost
of disaster relief.
Secretary-General Ban said droughts can
be mitigated and called for the full
implementation...
China's short-term
rates have now spiked to
double digits while the PBoC
continues to ignore the
problem.
Day-to-day rainfall in India
might become much more
variable due to climate
change – potentially putting
millions of poor farmers and
the country’s agricultural
productivity at risk. The
Indian monsoon is a complex
system which is likely to
change under future global
warming. While it is in the
very nature of weather to
vary, the question is how
much and whether we can deal
with it.
The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA)
announced that seven
university and college teams
received the People,
Prosperity and Planet (P3)
Award for their innovative
solutions to some of today's
toughest public health and
environmental challenges.
The Department of the
Interior is concerned about
an adverse impact on fish
and wildlife that could be
caused by the project's
construction and operation.
University of Maryland scientists say
they've developed an environmentally
friendly battery that uses wood as its
backbone.
The device uses a sliver of wood coated
with tin as its substrate, an advantage over
current batteries that often use stiff,
non-flexible substrates that are too rigid
to release the stress that occurs as ions
flow through the battery.
Small island states from the
Pacific Ocean to the
Caribbean face the same
energy and environmental
challenges as the rest of
the world – their challenges
are just more serious and
more urgent.
(the truth may surprise
you!) Some of these oils are
healthy and some are VERY
unhealthy -- soybean oil,
olive oil, coconut oil, corn
oil, etc... Let's take a
closer look.
The leaders of the Senate
Energy and Natural Resources
Committee, Chairman Ron
Wyden, D-Ore., and Ranking
Member Lisa Murkowski,
R-Alaska, today applauded
the Senate's passage of 14
bills that will encourage
the development of energy on
federal lands, protect
wilderness areas, expand the
boundaries of a historically
significant site and expand
recreational opportunities
and access at several rivers
and federal sites.
Crop yields worldwide are
not increasing quickly
enough to support estimated
global needs in 2050,
according to a study
published June 19 in the
open access journal PLOS ONE
by Deepak Ray and colleagues
from the Institute on the
Environment (IonE) at the
University of Minnesota.
Today, you may be 'chained'
to your reading glasses...
driving glasses...
bifocals... trifocals... or
even your 'coke bottle'
glasses. But in just a few
weeks, you could be seeing
more clearly without your
glasses -- and without
surgery or strenuous eye
exercises.
-
The secret to improving your mood and
brain health is in your gut, as
unhealthy gut flora can impact your
mental health, potentially leading to
issues like anxiety, depression, autism
and more
-
A recent proof-of-concept study found
that women who regularly ate yogurt
containing beneficial bacteria had
altered brain function compared to those
who did not consume probiotics
-
Just as you have neurons in your brain,
you also have neurons in your gut --
including neurons that produce
neurotransmitters like serotonin, which
is also found in your brain and is
linked to mood
-
Limiting sugar, eating traditionally
fermented foods, and taking a probiotic
supplement are among the best ways to
optimize your gut flora and subsequently
support your brain health and normalize
your mood
June 18, 2013
Two suicide bombers blew
themselves up on Tuesday at
a hall in north Baghdad,
killing at least 15 people,
security officials said, the
latest in a surge in
nationwide violence.
...an international team led
by Professor Edward Hanna
from the University of
Sheffield's Department of
Geography found that a 'heat
dome' of warm southerly
winds over the ice sheet led
to widespread surface
melting.
According to NCDC’s 2012
weather and climate
disasters information, 2012
saw 11 weather and climate
disaster events each with
losses exceeding $1 billion
in damages. This makes 2012
the second costliest year
since 1980, with a total of
more than $110 billion in
damages throughout the year.
The 2012 total damages rank
only behind 2005, which
incurred $160 billion in
damages due in part to four
devastating land-falling
hurricanes.
Today’s U.S. Supreme Court
ruling on Arizona’s voter
registration citizenship
proof requirement is not the
end of the process, and the
Court set forth a clear
pathway to victory for that
requirement, Attorney
General Tom Horne said
today.
Eng. Andrea A. Rossi and
Professor Sergio Focardi of
the University of Bologna
(one of the oldest
universities in the world
[1]), have announced to the
world that they have a cold
fusion device capable of
producing more than 10
kilowatts of heat power,
while only consuming a
fraction of that. On January
14, 2011, they gave the
Worlds' first public
demonstration of a
nickel-hydrogen fusion
reactor capable of producing
a few kilowatts of thermal
energy. At its peak, it is
capable of generating 15,000
watts with just 400 watts
input required. In a
following test the same
output was achieved but with
only 80 watts of continual
input.
Beneath the surface of
Alaska’s magnificent
landscapes, her Arctic
drilling controversies and
media-blitzed Iditarod lie
hidden worlds. Remnants of a
fragile yet dynamic
spiritual reality reside
here, having sustained
Native peoples who for
thousands of years have
lived on the edge of the
Seward Peninsula. The
history of the Innupiat is a
saga riddled with the
catastrophic impacts of
acculturation, 20th century
epidemics and the traumatic
loss of traditional culture
and values
The Bakken Federal Executive
Group, which represents a
dozen federal bureaus with
responsibilities in the
Bakken, has identified
several items to advance the
development of oil and gas
resources in the booming
Bakken Formation and ways to
work with state agencies and
industry to help reduce
natural gas flaring in the
area. The bureaus include
the Bureau of Land
Management (BLM), Bureau of
Indian Affairs, Bureau of
Reclamation.
Trust is something that’s
earned, not given. Over the
past decade, we’ve come to
trust tech companies with
our data because they
promised to keep it secure.
That trust was called into
question earlier this month.
The chart below shows
a clear divergence in trends
of the total loans and
leases on US banks' balance
sheets and the broad money
supply measure (M2). Loan
balance growth is slowing,
while the money supply keeps
growing at a steady rate of
around 7%.
-
Cheese contains the powerful nutritional
triad of calcium, vitamin D and vitamin
K2, which together channel calcium into
your bones and teeth while keeping it
out of your arteries; this, combined
with its omega-3 fats, make cheese a
very heart-healthy food
-
The cheese you select should be made
from high-quality milk, ideally raw
organic milk from grass-pastured animals
that are never fed grain or soy; avoid
processed “cheese foods” as they contain
chemical additives
-
Recent concerns about the salt content
of natural cheese are overblown when
compared to the massive sodium levels in
processed food, especially when you take
into account how much processed food
people typically consume
-
Excellent cheese picks due to their high
K2 levels are Edam, Gouda, and brie, but
cheddar, Colby, hard goat cheese, Swiss
and Gruyere are good choices as well
China's consumer
confidence declined sharply
in May to 99.0 from 103.7 in
April. Of course household
spending in China represents
only around 35% of the GDP
(according to the World
Bank), while the US consumer
is over 70%. Nevertheless
taken together with China's
manufacturing PMI, we may be
seeing signs of renewed
economic weakness.
The rate of chronic wasting
disease (CWD) is on the rise
among deer in Iowa County,
Wisconsin and elsewhere
across the state. CWD is a
fatal, transmissible
spongiform encephalopathy
(TSE) similar to what is
commonly known as mad cow
disease that is caused by
twisted proteins, or prions.
For hunters, writes outdoors
reporter Patrick Durkin,
this means the disease might
be affecting the herd now.
For anyone who eats venison,
this means greater chances
that the disease could
conceivably make the species
jump and infect humans,
according to Dave Clausen, a
veterinarian whose term on
Wisconsin's Natural
Resources Board expired in
May.
Workers at the Beaver Valley
Nuclear Power Station in
Shippingport, Pa., about 35
miles northwest of
Pittsburgh, were alerted to
a problem in the
turbine-generator area. A
second alarm sounded shortly
after signaling a CO2
discharge, prompting the
evacuation, the Pittsburgh
Tribune-Review reported.
Environmentalists are
questioning Florida's latest
plans to comply with federal
clean-air requirements
without mandating that two
of its heaviest-polluting
coal-fired power plants meet
the stricter pollution
limits.
The so-called Black Forest Fire,
smoldering on the outskirts of Colorado
Springs, is 65 percent contained, incident
commander Rich Harvey of the U.S. Forest
Service said at a news conference.
Harvey said subsiding winds, cooler
temperatures and some rain over the burn
area have aided firefighting efforts over
the last two days.
The headwinds that nuclear
energy has faced are blowing
once again. It’s not just
about the latest plant
closures. It’s also about
the announced delays and
potentially higher costs
associated with two separate
nuclear projects now
underway. Despite all that,
the industry is pushing back
and making headway.
SEPA reported that Duke
Energy's regulated utilities
have 183 megawatts of
capacity available for its
customers. That figure is
roughly half of the capacity
of the company's coal-fired
Lee Steam Station in South
Carolina.
New findings suggest a
series of current events are
weakening the Earth's
magnetic field. Above the
liquid outer core is the
mantle; a solid rock
composition which can be
moldable due to the intense
heat and high pressure. At
the boundary between Earth's
core and mantle at a depth
of 2900 km (1,802 miles),
there is an intense heat
exchange.
There are two doctrines that govern
surface water rights in the U.S. — one for
the West and one for the East.
The riparian doctrine covers the East.
"[Under] the riparian doctrine, if you live
close to the river or to that water body
[or] lake, you have reasonable rights to use
that water," ..
The Western U.S. uses the
prior appropriation
doctrine.
-
Research shows the use of neonicotinoid
pesticides in seed treatments is
responsible for the death of birds,
terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates
and other wildlife
-
Neonicotinoids also appear to be one of
the primary causes behind mass die-offs
of bees, which threatens one-third of
our food supply
-
Many pesticides are neurotoxic and can
cause disruptions to your neurological
system and your brain. Research has
linked pesticide exposure to Parkinson’s
disease, raising your risk by 58 percent
-
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in
Roundup, chelates important minerals in
your body and inhibits enzymes that help
detoxify chemicals
A coalition of Islamist
forces has called for a
demonstration in support of
President Mohamed Mursi in
downtown Fayoum, while
unknown assailants attacked
the headquarters of the
Brotherhood's political
party and tried to break
into it.
Energy saving improvements
made to a property could
increase its value by 14
percent on average - and up
to 38 percent in some parts
of England - new research
has shown.
Ethiopia's parliament
unanimously ratified a
treaty on Thursday that
strips Egypt of its right to
the lion's share of the Nile
river waters, raising the
political temperature in a
dispute between Cairo and
Addis Ababa over the
construction of a dam.
Can women blame men for menopause?
They may have a case, according to new
research that suggests it was men's
interest in mating with younger females
that gave evolutionary rise to menopause
by sidelining older women from
reproduction.
The civil complaint
addresses ExxonMobil’s
illegal discharge of heavy
crude oil from a
20-inch-diameter interstate
pipeline, known as the
Pegasus Pipeline, that
ruptured in Mayflower,
Arkansas, on March 29.
Kyle Thacker's bloodline in the
underground coal mines of Eastern Kentucky
goes back decades.
His grandfather Willard Thacker raised 16
children on a miner's pay, beginning in the
days when the back-breaking job involved
blasting down coal and loading it into carts
with a shovel.
Yum, genetically engineered corn and
cotton.
That isn’t what most people would think.
(Especially the cotton bit. And especially the
GMO bit.)
But a growing number of pests appear to
share this sentiment. They’ve developed
immunity to corn and cotton crops
genetically engineered to contain the
pesticide Bt, so they’re now munching away
with impunity.
HARP is a refinance program
for homeowners who have lost
home equity since the date
of home purchase; its main
trait is that the program
waives PMI requirements for
homeowners who once had 20%
home equity, but now had
less.
Former Lebanese Prime
Minister Saad Hariri says
the nation’s militant Shia
movement, Hezbollah, is
risking the “fate of the
nation” by taking on an
expanded front-line role in
neighboring Syria’s civil
war.
The warning
from Hariri comes a week
after Hezbollah guerrillas
from Lebanon, fighting
beside Syrian government
troops, led the attack on
Qusair a strategic Syrian
town on the main highway
into Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.
A busload of around 40
Muscogee (Creek) Nation
citizens has traveled from
Oklahoma to Alabama to
support the men charged by
the Poarch Band of Creek
Indians with criminal
trespassing for trying to
hold a ceremony for Muscogee
Creek ancestors buried at
Hickory Ground.
Global photovoltaic
installations are predicted
to grow at double-digit
rates, despite a decrease in
European PV installation,
according to IHS.
Most Americans realize that
coal companies have been
contesting the decisions of
federal regulatory agencies.
But many do not see the
infighting that has occurred
between mining executives
and their labor unions,
which have a long and
painful history that centers
on working conditions and
job security.
Logging in temperate zones
may release more greenhouse
gases than previously
thought by destabilizing
carbon stored in forest
soils, argues a new paper
published in the journal
Global Change
Biology-Bioenergy. The
research involved analysis
of carbon released from
forest management practices
in the northeastern United
States. It found that while
most models assume carbon
stored in mineral soils to
be relatively stable, in
fact intensive logging
operations, like
clear-cutting, trigger
release of carbon from
various pools above and
below ground.
As unprecedented extreme
weather and climate change
wreak havoc across the
country, 48 local elected
officials today committed
themselves to fortifying
their cities, towns, and
counties.
U.S authorities on Thursday warned
makers of medical devices and hospital
networks to step up efforts to guard
against potential cyber attacks.
The Food and Drug Administration said
implanted devices, which could include
pacemakers or defibrillators, could be
connected to networks that are
vulnerable to hackers.
A Native American tribe in
Oklahoma on Thursday
registered its opposition to
a U.S. government plan that
would allow a wind farm to
kill as many as three bald
eagles a year despite
special federal protections
afforded the birds.
A new survey report has
revealed that the majority
of the public believe the
Government should support
the construction of more
renewable energy sources
like solar, wave and tidal
power.
Three quantitative microbial
risk assessments (QMRAs)
recently published in the
Journal of Food Protection
have demonstrated that
unpasteurized milk is a
low-risk food, contrary to
previous,
inappropriately-evidenced
claims suggesting a
high-risk profile.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission staff is
considering voiding a ruling
that was central in Southern
California Edison’s decision
to shutter the troubled San
Onofre nuclear power plant,
KPBS reports.
It was supposed to be the proverbial
win-win deal -- corporate utilities and
cities and towns providing power in North
Carolina would go in together to build
nuclear power plants and supply cheaper
energy to their customers.
More than 35 years ago, utility industry
officials and politicians came together to
craft a deal to allow private utilities and
municipal government power agencies,
including the one representing High Point,
to co-own nuclear power plants.
The nuclear
industry is wrestling with that question as
it tries to determine whether problems at
reactors, all designed in the 1960s and
1970s, are middle-aged aches and pains or
end-of-life crises.
This year,
utilities have announced the retirement of
four reactors, bringing the number remaining
in the United States to 100.
President Barack Obama has vowed to
tackle climate change in his second term,
but so far has not acted to strengthen a
tool that does not require backing from
Congress - the National Environmental Policy
Act.
NEPA, a statute that dates to the Nixon
administration, calls on officials to weigh
whether projects such as highways, dams or
oil drilling could harm the environment.
Buried in a little-noticed
rule on microwave ovens is a
change in the U.S.
government’s accounting for
carbon emissions that could
have wide-ranging
implications for everything
from power plants to the
Keystone XL pipeline.
U.S. spending on energy,
environment and
sustainability initiatives
by large corporations will
grow at just 5 percent
annually until 2017,
according to research from
independent analyst firm
Verdantix, from $34.6
billion in 2012 to $43.6
billion in 2017.
Orgone is of course closely related to
what some people call “free energy”. Wilhelm
Reich described Orgone Energy as the
primordial all permeating energy, the “stuff
that everything is made of”.
No wonder that advanced theoretical
physics are increasingly coming up with very
similar ideas, only under different labels:
It may sound
counter-intuitive, but Penn
State researchers are
reporting that a few cups of
hot cocoa — or other forms
of chocolate — may actually
help obese people control
diabetes and other
inflammation-related
diseases, based on a new
study of mice.
NSA Prism is motivated in
part by fears that
environmentally-linked
disasters could spur
anti-government activism...
Since the 2008 economic
crash, security agencies
have increasingly spied on
political activists,
especially environmental
groups, on behalf of
corporate interests. This
activity is linked to the
last decade of US defence
planning, which has been
increasingly concerned by
the risk of civil unrest at
home triggered by
catastrophic events linked
to climate change, energy
shocks or economic crisis -
or all three.
Hey guys, meet my new favorite terrible
state bill.
Narrowly beating out the Internet Posting
Removal Act, an Illinois bill that’ll make
your head spin, comes a bill to modify New
Jersey state law to permit police officers
to confiscate and search a driver’s
cellphone when they are involved in an
accident – simply if they feel the accident
may have been caused by texting/talking
while driving.
In separate lawsuits filed
this week in district court
in Sandoval County, Cochiti
and Jemez pueblos allege
that Jemez Mountains
Electric Coop failed "to
take reasonable precautions
to prevent and suppress
forest fires."
A welcome rain this
afternoon is helping to
extinguish the most
destructive wildfire in
Colorado history. The Black
Forest Fire within the
Colorado Springs city limits
killed two people Tuesday
while they were trying to
flee, and before the rain
began it was still raging
out of control.
a C1 event observed.
There are currently 7
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk. Solar
activity is likely to be low
with a slight chance for an
M-class flare on days one,
two, and three (18 Jun, 19
Jun, 20 Jun). The
geomagnetic field has been
at quiet levels for the past
24 hours. The
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet
levels on days one, two, and
three (18 Jun, 19 Jun, 20
Jun).
Residents near a coal ash
dump in Fayette County
describe a neighborhood
where birds die after
drinking from puddles,
puppies have birth defects,
people are sick and gray
dust covers everything.
Iran's President-elect
Hassan Rohani said his win
was a 'victory for
moderation' and vowed to
soothe tensions with the US
and factions inside Iran.
Three days after a stunning
upset at the polls, Mr.
Rohani proclaimed a “victory
for moderation…not
extremism” that he said
will begin to
repair everything from
stalled nuclear talks to
US-Iran hostility to Iran’s
caustic internal divisions.
Britain has signed a deal
with Moscow that could pave
the way for Russia's
state-owned nuclear power
company Rosatom to build
plants in Britain.
By researching undersea landslides off
the coast, Madin and a team of scientists
have put together a new time-line showing
the frequency of quakes over the last 10,000
years.
"We are in certainly within the window
when another great earthquake could occur
and for the smaller ones on the south coast
we're leaning out the window," said Madin.
Solar could become the
world's largest source of
energy, but government
support is critical to drive
clean energy use in addition
to market forces, says the
energy giant Royal Dutch
Shell.
-
A ketogenic diet, which calls for
minimizing carbohydrates and replacing
them with healthy fats and moderate
amounts of high quality protein, can
offer hope against cancer, both for
prevention and treatment
-
Your normal cells have the metabolic
flexibility to adapt from using glucose
to using ketone bodies. Cancer cells
lack this ability so when you reduce
carbs to only non-starchy vegetables,
you effectively starve the cancer
-
Cancer can be more accurately classified
as a mitochondrial metabolic disease.
Few people inherit genes that predispose
them to cancer (most inherit genes that
prevent cancer), and inherited mutations
typically disrupt the function of the
mitochondria
-
The mitochondria—the main power
generators in your cells—are believed to
be the central point in the origins of
many cancers. Your mitochondria can be
damaged not only by inherited mutations,
but also by a wide variety of
environmental factors and toxins
Addicted to sugar? A new study finds
that eating too much sweet stuff will
not only contribute to weight gain but
can set people down a pathway to heart
failure.
A single small molecule, the glucose
metabolite glucose 6-phosphate (G6P) --
which accumulates from eating too much
starch or sugar -- causes stress to the
heart that changes the muscle proteins
and induces poor pump function leading
to heart failure, researchers from the
University of Texas Health Science
Center at Houston reported.
The Supreme Court ruled on
Monday regulators can
challenge deals between
brand-name drug companies
and generic rivals that
delay cheaper medicines from
going on sale, which
regulators say increase
costs to consumers by
billions of dollars.
States may not require additional proof
of citizenship on federal forms designed to
streamline voter-registration procedures,
the Supreme Court ruled Monday.
The court rejected a requirement passed
by Arizona voters in 2004 that potential
voters supply proof of eligibility beyond an
applicant’s oath on the federal form that he
or she is a citizen.
Prime minister says test
undertaken at weapons
research centre provide
credible evidence that Syria
has used chemical weapons
President Obama and his
family are planning to
travel to Senegal, Tanzania,
and South Africa this month
and to spend up to $100
million of tax money on
their trip. Essentially, a
paid vacation and heritage
tour, the trip will involve
extensive federal
expenditure at a time when
federal employees are on
furlough working four day
weeks due to sequester.
Deputy PM says army could be
called into action to
restore order, as unions go
on strike to protest police
crackdown.
This quarter’s report finds
that the U.S. installed 723
megawatts (MW) in Q1 2013,
which accounted for over 48
percent of all new electric
capacity installed in the
U.S. last quarter. Overall,
these installations
represent the best first
quarter of any given year
for the industry. In
addition, the residential
and utility market segments
registered first-quarter
highs with 164 MW and 318 MW
respectively.
In another sign of
recent weakness in the
manufacturing sector,
capacity utilization in the
US has stalled, as demand
remains soft. US industries
are producing significantly
below their capacity and
"5.5 percentage points below
long-run average" according
to the Fed. We are certainly
far under the 82-85% level
at which economists believe
that the traditional
measures of inflation are
expected to rise.
The Pentagon said on Monday
it will spend $572 million
to buy 30 Russian-built
military helicopters that
will be used by Afghan
security forces.
Protecting wildlife
habitat and migratory fish
has much to do with the
amount of interest in rivers
as hydrokinetic waterpower
resources. The limited
power-generating potential
and the use of immature
technologies might be seen
as impediments, yet many
companies are showing a
desire to at least dip their
toes in the river water.
The SUNY College of
Environmental Science and
Forestry (SUNY-ESF) is
launching an outreach and
training program to develop
commercial-scale production
of willow biomass as a
renewable, sustainable
energy source -- bridging
the gap between developing
technology and practical use
-- as part of New York
Governor Andrew Cuomo's
Regional Council Initiative.
Austin Energy is on the
verge of signing two
large-scale wind contracts
that would satisfy the
city-owned utility's goal of
getting 35 percent of its
electricity from renewable
sources -- four years ahead
of a 2020 target date.
-
Wisconsin dairy farmer Vernon
Hershberger provides raw milk to members
of a private buying club; he was charged
with four criminal misdemeanors and
acquitted of three of them
-
The Wisconsin Department of Justice
filed a motion to revoke Hershberger’s
bail and instead send him to jail;
fortunately he was sentenced to pay a
$1,000 fine and avoided jail time
-
Regulators claim they are trying to
protect public health, but properly
produced raw milk is a safe, healthful
food
-
The fight over raw milk stands as a
symbol of the much larger fight for food
freedom. Who gets to decide what you
eat? You? Or your state and federal
regulators?
For the first time in two
months, mortgage rates
improved last week on a
week-over-week basis.
The world will have enough wind turbines
to generate more than 300 gigawatts of power
- the equivalent of 114 nuclear power plants
- by the end of the year, industry figures
show.
As Brazil, China, Mexico and South Africa
add turbines, the figure represents modest
growth compared with a year ago, when the
overall total capacity was just over 280
gigawatts.
As some U.S. utilities are
abandoning old nuclear power
plants, Xcel Energy says
it's investing $1.8 billion
to extend the life of its
40-year-old Minnesota
reactors.
June 14, 2013
Sixteen consumers have sued
Southern California Edison
and Pacific Gas and Electric
in state court alleging that
the utilities' "smart
meters" caused them physical
harm ranging from dizziness
and ringing in their ears to
radiation burns and cancer.
The American Civil
Liberties Union sued the
Obama administration
Tuesday, asking the
government to halt a
phone-tracking program that
collects the telephone
records of millions of
Americans and that it says
is unconstitutional.
Because of difficult and
persisting coal market
conditions, officials for
two Arch Coal mining
complexes announced the need
to further scale back
production and personnel.
The news media and the Congress had fun
being outraged over some conferences held by
the Internal Revenue Service. They had
actually spent $17,000 for a painter who
painted while giving a talk. They gave away
mugs with logos on them. They did things
companies do at conferences.
Somehow the very smallness of the dumb
things allowed the news media and the
Congress to think about them.
As mortgage rates in
the US reach the highs not
seen since early 2012, many
are asking the key question:
would this rise in rates
impact the housing market or
consumer sentiment?
A bipartisan bill, the
Sensible Accounting to Value
Energy (SAVE) Act, has been
reintroduced that could
improve access to mortgage
financing for energy
efficiency.
On average, home utility
bills are larger than either
real estate taxes or
homeowner's insurance, yet
they are not included in
federal mortgage
underwriting rules, making
it difficult for homeowners
to finance the up-front cost
of improvements. But with no
tax increase, fees, or
mandate, the SAVE Act would
remove the barriers to
finance and increase the
supply of energy-efficient
homes and renovations.
Two suicide bombers hit a
central Damascus square
during rush hour Tuesday,
killing at least 14 people,
activists and the Syrian
state media reported.
Activists said one of the
explosions took place inside
the police station there and
that many among the dead
were policemen.
Take a long, hard look
above...
These are
the people who represent
you... who represent
America.
How does
that make you feel?
Proud?
Safe?
Personally, it makes
me feel sick.
Sixty-two people were killed and more
than 190 others hurt Monday in a wave of
car-bomb attacks across Iraq.
The deadliest incident was near the
northern city of Mosul, where the detonation
of four explosives-laden vehicles left 25
dead and 80 wounded, most of them members of
the security forces, an Iraqi police source
told Efe.
A wind-whipped wildfire menaced
Colorado's second-largest city on Wednesday,
forcing thousands of residents to flee
flames that have destroyed more than 90
homes in a wooded subdivision.
The fast-moving blaze was raging out of
control about 15 miles northeast of Colorado
Springs, devouring additional homes into the
evening as winds sent the flames doubling
back into areas that already had burned, El
Paso County authorities said.
Renewable energy and natural
gas could work together as
sources of electricity
generation, rather than as
competitors on the Texas
grid, according to a new
report produced for the
Texas Clean Energy
Coalition.
About 1.2 billion people
still lack access to
electricity, and 2.8 billion
have to rely on wood or
other biomass to cook and
heat their homes, said a
recent report produced by a
multi-agency team led by the
World Bank.
Since posting this
chart of WTI crude oil price
(sent by a reader) on
Twitter, we've received a
number of constructive
replies. The technical
trading term for this
pattern is "symmetric
triangle", which would
typically result in a
breakout to either side.
Usually such breakouts are
accompanied by rising
volatility.
By the end of this decade there will be
an estimated 230 million tons of plastic
polluting the world’s oceans, enough
material to make 400 million two-liter
beverage bottles. Plastic takes anywhere
from 10 to 500 years to degrade in the
ocean.
To call attention to this enormous but
‘quiet’ problem, DNV along with the World
Wildlife Fund, has designed a revolutionary
new ocean research vessel, the Spindrift, as
part of a worldwide awareness-building
effort.
There are people in our
nation who are willing to
sacrifice their liberty for
a smokescreen of ambiguous
security. You see, they
treat liberty like a common
object of little value, as
if they can easily replace
it with something better if
it breaks. But the liberty
they fumble with was paid
for with the blood of
patriots. It is sacred and
irreplaceable.
A landslide that damaged the
trans-Ecuador pipeline and caused some
420,000 gallons of crude oil to spill into
the Coca river is reportedly not only
affecting Peru but could also have impacts
on Brazil.
The BBC reported that the estimated
11,480 barrels of oil leaked from the
landslide on May 31 have already reached the
Peruvian region of Loreto, with Brazil “on
alert” as the oil spill is travelling
downstream towards the Brazilian Amazon.
New scientific research
tells us many animals can
sense the Earth's magnetic
field. Animals and humans
have a magnetic field which
surrounds them - very much
in the same way the magnetic
field surrounds the Earth as
its protector. As it relates
to humans, and perhaps
various animals, charged
particles from the Sun and
our Milky Way can cause
confusion or a disturbance
in our emotions.
"This is not a military
issue at this stage," Ahmed
Mohamed Ali told Reuters
after days of irate
exchanges between Africa's
second and third most
populous nations over a new
hydroelectric plant that
Egypt fears will reduce its
vital water supply.
People who drive electric cars pay the
equivalent of $1.51 per gallon of gas in
fueling expense in California but only 83
cents in North Dakota, according to new
federal government figures.
The Energy Department data show the wide
variability between states in the cost
savings for charging electric vehicles. The
national average is $1.14.
The U.S. Energy Department
today launched “eGallon,” a
quick and easy online
state-by-state system for
drivers to compare the cost
of fueling an electric
vehicle with the cost of
driving the same distance on
unleaded regular gasoline
It is hard even to survey
this territory. The problem
is not just that the
suggested solutions are
diverse. The questions being
asked are also different, as
are the criteria for
answering them, the
vocabularies in which they
are expressed, and the
politics with which they are
associated. Figuring out
what the assumptions and
audiences of the various
alternatives are is half the
work of assessing where a
democratic and survivable
energy future might lie. The
point of this report is not
to simplify the debate over
energy alternatives, but to
clarify how complex it is.
If the need for action is
urgent, then so is the need
for an understanding capable
of making that action
effective.
The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA)
recently released results of
a survey showing that $384B
in improvements are needed
for the nation’s drinking
water infrastructure through
2030 for systems to continue
providing safe drinking
water to 297 million
Americans.
The natural gas boom in the
US due to hydraulic
fracturing (fracking) has
provided the country with a
cleaner burning, inexpensive
fuel source that has lowered
energy bills for industrial
facilities and homeowners
alike [sic]
[read comments on this
article: re:
Ethyl Glycol----antifreeze. It tastes
sweet. Every year, hundreds of dogs die from
licking glycol off of driveways and garage
floors where it has been spilled because of
the sweet taste. They die.
Sodium/Potassium Hydroxide-------lye.
None of these chemicals is something you
want in your drinking water. ]
The decision to shutter the
2,150-megawatt San Onofre
Nuclear Generating Station
(SONGS) by Southern
California Edison Co. (SCE)
underscores the significant
challenges confronting both
regulated and unregulated
nuclear operators according
to Fitch Ratings.
Flooding in central Europe
has pushed hydropower
development and its role in
managing water flows to the
top of the political agenda
this week. With multiple
deaths reported, the Danube,
the Elbe and other major
rivers in the region have
seen Austria, Germany and
the Czech Republic all
affected by rising water
levels. Thousands of people
have been evacuated in the
Czech Republic where a state
of emergency has been
declared and Germany’s
Chancellor Angela Merkel has
promised EUR100 million to
support flood affected
areas.
A 60-year-old statute
barring all protest on the
marble plaza outside the US
Supreme Court is
'irreconcilable with the
First Amendment,' a federal
judge in Washington ruled.
China led a rise in global carbon dioxide
emissions to a record high in 2012, more
than offsetting falls in the United States
and Europe, the International Energy Agency
(IEA) said on Monday.
Worldwide CO2 emissions rose by 1.4
percent to 31.6 billion tons, according to
estimates from the Paris-based IEA.
Anyone who has looked at a
computer screen in the last
10 years or so is well aware
of the search engine
behemoth that is Google.
Controlling over 65% of the
search engine sector, even
their mission statement
acknowledges their impact,
stating they desire "to
organize the world's
information and make it
universally accessible and
useful." Based on their
performance, it would be
difficult to dispute their
relevance in our day-to-day
lives.
-
Emerging evidence suggests running shoes
may alter your gait, causing you to
strike the ground heel-first, increasing
your collision force with the ground and
increasing the risk of injury
-
Barefoot running encourages you to
strike the ground with the cushioned
fore-foot, which is a more natural gait
-
Humans have been running barefoot, or
close to it, since the beginning of
time; running shoes were only invented
in the 1970s
-
Going barefoot also allows you to
“ground” with the Earth and absorb
negative electrons from the Earth
through the soles of your feet; this
grounding effect is one of the most
potent antioxidants we know of and may
have an anti-inflammatory effect on your
body
A homeowner who answered his
doorbell at 11 p.m. Saturday
night shot a masked man who
lunged at him with a knife,
the Glynn County police
said.
Iran's Russian-built nuclear power plant
has experienced technical problems with its
generator and experts are working to resolve
the issue, Tehran's envoy to Moscow said on
Monday.
Ambassador Mahmoud Reza Sajjadi said
there was "absolutely no link" between this
problem at the Bushehr plant - which was
shut down when U.N. nuclear inspectors went
there in mid-May - and a powerful earthquake
that shook the region two months ago.
A proposed decision by
Administrative Law Judge
Jean Vieth has denied the
city's request to place the
lines below ground, saying
while undergrounding is
feasible and could be
completed on a timely basis
"the cost is prohibitive and
should not be borne by
ratepayers at large for the
benefit of a few."
"Sit back, relax and prepare
yourselves for the great
news that the world's been
told." "Sit back, relax and
prepare yourselves for the
great news that the world's
been told." Cold Fusion
Radio's James Martinez
devotes a special broadcast
to the recent third-party
report on Andrea Rossi's
E-Cat HT technology which
confirms big anomalous heat
from hydrogen-infused nickel
powder. (LENRNews;
June 2, 2013)
Lithium (Li-ion) batteries
used to power plug-in hybrid
and electric vehicles show
great potential, but the
Environmental Protection
Agency says there are lots
of areas for improvement --
specifically, reducing
impacts to the environment
and public health.
"While Li-ion batteries for
electric vehicles are
definitely a step in the
right direction from
traditional gasoline-fueled
vehicles and nickel
metal-hydride automotive
batteries, some of the
materials and methods used
to manufacture them could be
improved," said Jay Smith,
Abt Associates senior
analyst and co-lead of a
cradle-to-grave life-cycle
assessment for the EPA and
DOE.
Many species of birds, amphibians and
corals not currently under threat will be at
risk from climate change and have been
wrongly omitted from conservation planning,
an international study said on Wednesday.
The Amazon rainforest was among the
places where ever more types of birds and
amphibians would be threatened as
temperatures climbed, it said. Common corals
off Indonesia would also be among the most
vulnerable.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has offered a $20
billion dollar plan with more than 250
recommendations for making New York City
more resilient to extreme weather resulting
from climate change.
The plan recommends installation of
“integrated flood protection systems,
measures like flood walls and levees” that
can reduce the risk of flooding and can
provide access to the waterfront for
recreational, transportation and commercial
uses at times storms are not threatening.
The development of the sensor
technology, detailed in the Journal
of the American Chemical Society,
could significantly simplify the
diagnosis and monitoring of diabetes
through breath analysis alone.
Currently, diabetes is diagnosed through
a series of blood tests in clinical
settings, and then patients must monitor
their condition daily through expensive,
invasive methods — including needle
sticks to draw blood to be tested for
blood sugar levels.
Microgrids are smaller,
self-contained electricity
grids with their own sources
of power. The sources of
power vary, but they often
utilize renewable energy
such as solar or wind. They
can operate in conjunction
with the main utility grids
but can also operate
independent of the main grid
for extended periods of
time; often indefinitely
depending on the energy
source.
Conventional geothermal
power exploits naturally
occurring pockets of steam
or hot water close to the
Earth's surface to generate
electricity. Because such
conditions are rare, the
majority of today's
geothermal power projects
are located in North America
and Asia Pacific where these
conditions are found.
Although North America leads
with the largest number of
projects in the pipeline,
Asia Pacific has the most
capacity under development.
Scientists have long known that ocean
acidification is leading to a decline in
Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) in the
U.S.'s Pacific Northwest region, but a new
study in the American Geophysical Union
shows exactly how the change is undercutting
populations of these economically-important
molluscs. Caused by carbon dioxide
emissions, ocean acidification changes the
very chemistry of marine waters by lowering
pH levels; this has a number consequences
including decreasing the availability of
calcium carbonate, which oysters and other
molluscs use to build shells.
Oil spilled from Petroecuador’s
Trans-Ecuador pipeline after a May31
landslide in the Andean foothills has
reached the Peruvian Amazon.
The landslide that destroyed a 330-foot
section of the pipeline is blamed on heavy
rain in the province of Sucumbios near the
El Reventador Volcano, one of Ecuador’s most
active volcanoes.
Police say an
elderly man held a 28-year-old burglary
suspect at gunpoint when the man allegedly
tried to break into his house early Thursday
morning.
The man was awakened around 4:30 a.m.
when he heard noise at his back door in the
5000 block of S. Bypass Terrace. When he
went to investigate, he said he saw Anthony
Cabralalez attempting to break in to the
house.
The government created a
stir this week when it said
that the power to run an
electric vehicle costs only
about one-third as much as
the cost of gasoline to
power a similar vehicle for
the same distance.
Regulators appear to be
losing the battle against
rising overdraft fees. Bank
customers who sign up for
overdraft protection
services have significantly
higher annual fees, a new
industry report finds, and
more involuntary account
closures than those without
one.
Sellers began reporting in
April that PayPal was
freezing payments for coins
and stamps originating in
countries such as Cuba and
North Korea - despite the
fact that the sellers and
items were not located in
those countries.
Vandals throwing tree limbs on electric
lines leading to PPL's substation in Harwood
severed power to more than 10,000 customers
in the Hazleton area for close to three
hours on Sunday evening.
PPL Spokesman Joe Nixon said tree limbs
had been thrown over the lines in the area
two weeks earlier, too, but didn't cause a
widespread outage then.
Quebec's government has
introduced right-to-die
legislation. If the bill
passes the province would
become Canada's first with a
law permitting medically
assisted death.
A senior official in the
department used his position
to secure competitive
internships in 2012 for his
three college-aged children.
In addition, the report
found, the senior staffer
didn’t think he had done
anything wrong and defended
his actions to
investigators, saying doling
out favors for family
members is a common practice
in the department.
Solar activity has been at
very low levels for the past
24 hours. There are
currently 3 numbered sunspot
regions on the disk.
slight chance for an M-class
flare on days one, two, and
three (14 Jun, 15 Jun, 16
Jun). he geomagnetic field
is expected to be at quiet
levels on days one, two, and
three (14 Jun, 15 Jun, 16
Jun).
A bill to clarify the
oversight of coal ash is
dusting itself off now that
a compromise bill has
cleared a key congressional
House panel. The measure
would give the states
control over regulating the
coal combustion byproduct
but would do so with input
from the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency.
The Senate on Monday passed
a five-year,
half-trillion-dollar farm
bill that expands government
subsidies for crop
insurance, rice and peanuts
while making small cuts to
food stamps.
Just a few short years ago, nuclear power
appeared poised for a comeback.
Global warming had given the industry,
stagnant since the 1980s, new hope.
Shale oil is a rapidly
developing source of oil and
natural gas. Where does it
lie? Estimated shale oil and
shale gas resources in the
United States and in 137
shale formations in 41 other
countries represent 10% of
the world's crude oil and
32% of the world's natural
gas technically recoverable
resources, or those that can
be produced using current
technology without reference
to economic profitability,
according to a new report
released today by the U.S.
Energy Information
Administration (EIA).
The Sierra Club and American
Electric Power (AEP) have
reached a tentative
agreement that would resolve
the future of power
generation in eastern
Kentucky after the
retirement of the coal-fired
generators at the Big Sandy
Power Plant in 2015,
according to the Sierra
Club.
Climatologists, physicists
and biologists are using
advanced instruments to
collect continuous
measurements of the surface
air and the water to a depth
of about 15 feet. The data
will help them understand
the complex relationship of
ocean, atmosphere and
climate.
Green in that it is
virtually carbon-free. To
Brand, nuclear is a solution
to the climate crisis
brought on by the burning of
fossil fuels. It is a power
source that's delivering 19
percent of the U.S. energy
supply while solar provides
less than 1 percent. In
France, as Brand often
points out, nuclear plants
are generating 80 percent of
the country's power.
A plan to be unveiled today
to more than double the
energy efficiency in state
and Honolulu County
buildings could add 5,000
new jobs to Hawaii's economy
by 2015 and bolster efforts
to meet aggressive
clean-energy goals.
With ongoing news and talk
of global warming's effects
on the environment, "going
green" has become a war cry
of the age. Businesses and
homeowners alike continue to
look for ways to find a
balance between going green
and staying in sync with
this technological era.
The requests, made by
Google, Facebook, Microsoft
and Yahoo and echoed by a
top official from Twitter,
came as debate intensified
over whether oversight of
government spying programs
grew too lax in the
aftermath of the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks, when security
concerns combined with
soaring technological
capabilities led to
individuals being monitored
on a vast new scale.
The five billion euro
question should be...where's
ROI? The European Court of
Auditors was not looking for
Elmo recently they were
looking for return on
investment for the five
billion Euros (6.7 billion
US dollars) spent through
the European Union's
Cohesion Policy Fund. "The
Cohesion is a European Union
regional policy that
provides a framework for
financing a range of
projects intended to
encourage economic growth in
member states. Since 2000,
the EU, through its Cohesion
Policy funds, spent about $5
billion ($6.7 billion) for
co-financing energy
efficiency measures in
member states."
The rate curve implied
by the Fed Funds futures has
steepened considerably over
the past month. The market
now anticipates the Fed
beginning to raise the
overnight rate in May of
2015. A month ago the
expectation was for the end
of 2015 - the implied rate
hike has been pulled
forward.
We all know that we need the
best possible protection
against terrorism and that
increasing amounts of data
must be collected by the
government to make that
happen. But we need only
look at the Internal Revenue
Service and the Justice
Department to realize how
extensive is the potential
for abuse of this data,
especially in an
administration as corrupted,
self-involved,
self-righteous and partisan
as this one.
So
where's the balance?
So now it has been revealed:
the U.S. National Security Agency may
know as much about you as Google does.
Google (and Facebook, and other Internet
companies) use this information to better
target ads and services. The NSA is out to
find people on the verge of doing bad
things.
Although reverse osmosis
(RO) membranes have
developed to provide nearly
60% of worldwide desalinated
water, there remains a large
demand for thermal processes
despite predictions the
technology use will shrink,
an industry expert has said.
The US Congress wants to
deny 2 million people food
stamps, while hardly denting
large agribusinesses.
The cost of providing poor
Americans with food stamps
has doubled in the past four
years, reflecting the fact
that a record 47.8 million
people are struggling to
feed themselves and their
families. The US Congress
has an answer to the growth
in poverty: force more
people to struggle.
In total, 45,000 people have
been asked to leave their
homes in Saxony-Anhalt, the
state currently worst
affected by the flooding.
About 11,500 rescue workers
are operating in the area.
In Magdeburg, one of the
oldest cities in eastern
Germany and a regional
capital, some 23,000 people
were asked to evacuate as
water levels in the Elbe
rose to a record 7.48
meters, around 5 meters
above normal and surpassing
the level reached in
devastating floods in 2002.
Fatma, a 24-year-old trained
nurse, thought “here we go
again” when she learned on
Twitter that the Istanbul
Municipality had plans to
modernize the city’s iconic
Taksim Square, which
includes one of the few
green parks left in the
urban sprawl.
Turkey's ruling party says
it is open to holding a
referendum on an Istanbul
park redevelopment plan that
has been the catalyst of
ongoing anti-government
protests that have rocked
the country for nearly two
weeks.
Ratcheting up his defiant
tone, Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan appears
determined to end two weeks
of protests that have put an
unflattering international
spotlight on his
Islamic-rooted government
and its handling of the
biggest street unrest of his
10-year tenure.
Nearly
93,000 people have been
confirmed killed since
Syria's civil war began more
than two years ago, the U.N.
said Thursday, a sharp rise
in the death toll as the
fighting turns increasingly
sectarian and the carnage
gripping the country appears
unstoppable.
Federal prosecutors in New
Jersey on Wednesday unveiled
criminal charges against
eight people accused of
trying to steal at least $15
million from U.S. customers
in an international
cybercrime scheme targeting
accounts at 15 financial
institutions and government
agencies.
China and the United States
took a major step in the
fight against climate change
over the weekend, but what
was termed a "breakthrough"
might not do much in the
longer term to lock in
legally binding carbon
emission cuts from the
world's two biggest emitters
of greenhouse gases.
Freddie Mac (OTCQB:
FMCC) today
released the results of its
Primary Mortgage
Market Survey®
(PMMS®), showing fixed
mortgage rates climbing
higher amid a solid
employment report for May.
Since beginning their climb
last month, the 30-year
fixed-rate mortgage has
increased over half a
percentage point.
Regardless, mortgage rates
are coming off their
all-time record lows, which
is helping to keep homebuyer
affordability high.
The discovery of the wheat,
not approved for cultivation
anywhere in the world, shook
the global market when it
was announced on May 29.
Some U.S. customers in Asia
and Europe halted purchases
or said they would test
incoming wheat shipments for
biotech grain.
[All modern wheat has been
modified so much as to now
be rendered unhealthy.
Check out "einkorn" wheat
for a healthy alternative!
ED]
Sea level rise is already
posing a threat in many
coastal areas and you are
right that the rate of
increase varies considerably
in different locations.
As the Earth has warmed over
these years, some 85 percent
of this excess heat has gone
into Earth’s oceans. So, one
driver of sea level rise is
what scientists call
“thermal expansion.” The
added heat actually causes
the sea to expand.
The OECD recently
updated its 2013 projection
of government deficits for
the countries they track.
The latest results show
Japan running by far the
largest fiscal deficit, the
UK is number 4 on the list,
and the US is number 9 (out
of total of 37). Here is the
full list which includes a
few surprises.
-
The documentary Killer at Large
investigates the topic of obesity, a
problem of truly epic proportions where
misinformation is a major driver of its
skyward trend
-
Conventional diet and health
recommendations are grossly flawed.
Obesity and related health problems are
directly attributable to improper diet—a
diet too high in carbs and poor-quality
proteins, and too low in healthy fats
-
Calorie counting has been firmly
debunked by science. It is FAR more
important to look at the source of the
calories than counting them. You get fat
because you eat the wrong kind of
calories
-
First and foremost, a healthy diet is
based on fresh whole, preferably organic
foods, and foods that have been
minimally processed
Using wood for energy, thought to be
cleaner than fossil fuels, could, in fact,
lead to greater carbon emissions than
estimated, a U.S. study found.
The impact would come not from the
burning of the wood but from large amounts
of carbon released from deep forest soils as
a result of disturbances such as logging,
researchers at Dartmouth College reported
Tuesday.
June 11, 2013
The batteries installed at a
Maui Electric Co. substation
can store electricity for
one hour, A123 said today in
a statement. The system
regulates voltage on the
grid, shifts peak loads and
retains excess power
generated by wind turbines.
Eruptions from Pavlof
Volcano continued on
Wednesday after rumbling to
life earlier in the week.
The 8,261-foot peak on the
Alaska Peninsula awoke
Monday morning, kicking off
a “low-level eruption of
lava,” according to the
Alaska Volcano
Observatory (AVO). Sitting
about 30 miles northeast of
the community of King Cove,
Pavlof is a
frequently-active volcano
that last erupted in 2007.
The volcano’s rumbling has
strengthened this week.
This is an
important week in the history of modern
Iran. Indeed, it could prove a turning point
in Iran’s nuclear weapons program and the
region’s march towards a major war.
On Friday,
millions of Iranians will turn out to vote
in national elections, hoping to choose
their country’s next President. Actually,
the whole exercise will once again be a
sham. It might look like democracy on
television. But behind the scenes, the
forces of the Ayatollah Khamenei will be
stuffing the ballot boxes to make sure the
Supreme Leader’s personal choice is
“elected.”
Crude oil prices are
expected to drift lower and
stabilize around $80/barrel
by 2015-2016, industry
analysts said Monday, adding
that in the near term,
however, prices are expected
to stay around $100/b.
"The house of oil has a
$120/b ceiling and a $80/b
floor. We have been staying
at the high end for many,
many years and now we are
sliding towards the floor,"
Fereidun Fesharaki, chairman
of Facts Global Energy, said
at his Crystal Ball session
at the Asia Oil & Gas
Conference in Kuala Lumpur.
The US Government's data
fishing expedition recently
unexposed has citizens
outraged at this blatant
disregard for several
Constitutional provisions.
The mainstream news, usually
complicit in such
conspiracies, shows the
extent to which people are
waking up.
This is just the latest in a
spate of violence in Iraq.
Monthly death tolls have hit
levels that haven’t been
seen since 2008, AP
reported. The United Nations
estimates that in May alone,
1,045 civilians and security
forces were killed — and
that’s far above April’s
number, at 712.
-
Bees have been dying off around the
world for a decade now from a phenomenon
called Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD.
A third of the U.S. food supply depends
on the honeybees
-
This year, the US experienced the
highest losses of honeybee populations
so far, with most of the nation’s
beekeepers losing anywhere from 50 to 90
percent of their bee population
-
Many of the 6,000 almond orchard owners
in California could not find enough bees
to pollinate their almond trees, at any
price, this year
-
The collapse of bee colonies is probably
multifactorial, but a major factor is
the toxicity of systemic pesticides
called nicotinoids, which kills insects
by attacking their nervous systems
-
In May, beekeepers and environmental
groups filed a lawsuit against the
agency over its failure to protect bees
from toxic pesticides
Both SONGS units have been
shut down safely since
January 2012. Unit 2 was
taken out of service January
9, 2012, for a planned
routine outage. Unit 3 was
safely taken offline January
31, 2012, after station
operators detected a leak in
a tube inside a steam
generator manufactured by
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
(MHI). Two steam generators
manufactured by MHI were
installed in Unit 2 in 2009
and two more were installed
in Unit 3 in 2010, one of
which developed the leak.
-
Ancient wild plants provided an
astounding level of phytonutrients that
are largely absent from our modern
cultivated fruits and veggies
-
Ancient farmers’ preference for sweeter,
starchier foods led to many of the less
nutritious staples common today, such as
sweet corn
-
Bitter and brighter colored plants that
were packed with nutrition have been
largely replaced with sweeter, more
muted varieties
-
Genetic modification is also altering
the nutrition content of the food
supply; a new analysis showed GM corn to
be far less nutritious than non-GM corn
The damage wrought by the
Powerhouse Fire comes as
officials in California have
warned of a particularly
early and intense start of
the fire season. Two major
wildfires are also burning
in New Mexico, including one
that was threatening Native
American sites.
As the Danube River reaches
record high levels and
thousands flee Europe's
worst flooding in more than
a decade, scientists already
are predicting that this
deluge may be a portent of
things to come.
The idea of slapping a price on carbon to
reduce emissions and tackle global warming
is moribund in Congress for now. But that’s
not the case elsewhere in the world.
A big new World Bank report (pdf) finds
that more than 40 national governments and
20 sub-national governments have either put
in place carbon-pricing schemes or are
planning one for the years ahead. That
includes either carbon taxes or some form of
cap-and-trade. Here’s a map of the countries
that are planning the latter:
Both magnitude — and rupture
speed — affect the damage
The rupture speed of most earthquakes
tops out around 5,600 to 6,700 mph (9,000 to
10,800 kilometers per hour) which is slower
than the speed at which seismic shear waves
(one type of seismic wave generated by an
earthquake) emanate from the epicenter of
the quake.
But there can be situations where the
earthquake ruptures faster, up to 11,000 to
13,000 mph (18,000 or 21,600 kilometers per
hour), and sends out a shock wave that can
do more damage than a normal earthquake.
Keep your
distance: The director of national
intelligence is having intestinal distress.
“For me, it is literally — not
figuratively, literally — gut-wrenching to
see this happen,” James Clapper told Andrea
Mitchell over the weekend, referring to
leaks about the government’s secret program
to collect vast troves of phone and Internet
data.
Want to pay $7,000 for a $37,000 electric
car?
It's not a trick question. For the first
time, through the magic of subsidized
leases, electric vehicles can now compete on
price with comparable gas-powered cars --
indeed, they are cheaper once you factor in
gas savings.
Electric cars may be dropping in price
and adding features, but Peoria isn't
getting a big charge out of them just yet.
Area car dealers add that, while few in
number, buyers of electric models are
enthusiastic about a gas-free experience.
Electric cars represent a very small part
of the auto business right now. While 1.4
million new vehicles were sold nationally in
May, the highest total in six years, only
about 8,000 of them were electric-powered
vehicles.
Building on his strong focus
on energy efficiency in his
first few days in office,
U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest
Moniz announced today five
manufacturing research and
development projects to
support energy-efficient
lighting products. The
projects will focus on
reducing manufacturing costs
while continuing to improve
the quality and performance
of light-emitting diodes
(LEDs) and organic
light-emitting diodes
(OLEDs).
California could use $44.5 billion to fix
aging water systems over the next two
decades, according to a federal survey that
placed the state at the top of a national
list of water infrastructure needs.
Texas, at nearly $34 billion, and New
York, with about $22 billion, were next in
line.
The European Union, which is
trying to reduce its
dependence on Russia for gas
and diversify its supply
sources, is eyeing Israel as
a likely alternative and has
proposed linking it to the
Trans-Adriatic Pipeline,
Israeli industry sources
said Monday.
Millions of dollars in farm
subsidies for irrigation
equipment aimed at water
conservation have led to
more water use, not less,
threatening vulnerable
aquifers and streams.
From Wyoming to the Texas
Panhandle, water tables have
fallen 150 feet in some
areas — ranging from 15
percent to 75 percent —
since the 1950s, scientists
say, because the subsidies
give farmers the incentive
to irrigate more acres of
land.
Scientists find that
hard-to-track fires in
forest ‘understory’ have
done even greater damage to
rainforest than traditional
deforestation.
The Brazilian Amazon
harbours 40% of all
remaining tropical
rainforest, playing a vital
role in global biodiversity
conservation and climate
regulation.
When workers break ground for a plant at
the Humboldt Industrial Park on June 21 they
plan to install the first of 200 flywheels
that will regulate energy for the electrical
grid.
The flywheels spin to store electricity
and slow to release electricity.
lobal temperatures are on track to rise
by more than double the two-degree Celsius
(3.6-degree Fahrenheit) warming goal set by
the UN unless urgent measures are taken, the
International Energy Agency warned Monday.
"The path we are currently on is more
likely to result in a temperature increase
of between 3.6 and 5.3 C (6.5-9.5F)," IEA
chief Maria van der Hoeven said in
presenting a new report on greenhouse gases.
Gov. Dave Heineman signed a
bill into law Tuesday that
will pave the way for a
massive wind farm project in
Nebraska.
Ground-water use has many
societal benefits. It is the
source of drinking water for
about half the nation and
nearly all of the rural
population, and it provides
over 50 billion gallons per
day in support of the
Nation’s agricultural
economy. Ground-water
depletion, a term often
defined as long-term
water-level declines caused
by sustained ground-water
pumping, is a key issue
associated with ground-water
use. Many areas of the
United States are
experiencing ground-water
depletion.
It's not clear if the advocacy groups
require state or federal permits for project
construction. Keystone XL requires a U.S.
federal permit to proceed with construction.
Supporters of the project said it would
ensure North American energy security and
provide a source of economic stimulus.
Opponents say so-called tar sands oil is an
environmental risk not worth pursuing.
Some in the mass media
continue to be confused
about the historical
trajectory of the Fed's
balance sheet. People have
trouble distinguishing
between the liquidity
facilities provided by the
central bank and the various
monetary expansion
activities. Here is a
historical "map" to show how
we got here.
Hungary’s government said it
was containing the flooding
Danube in Budapest, while
the economic toll grew in
Germany, where thousands of
people have been evacuated
along the overflowing Elbe
River.
Much has been made of
the declining labor
participation rate in the
US. What is not always made
clear however is that about
half of those declines is
simply the result of aging
US population. Clearly
cyclical forces have been at
work in recent years as
people drop out of the
workforce. But over the log
run demographics win out.
The Interior Department will
release details for the
first federal offshore wind
lease sale Tuesday, Interior
Secretary Sally Jewell
announced in a Monday media
call. Jewell said the lease
sale would be for a plot off
the Atlantic coast, and said
it could serve as a litmus
test of industry demand for
offshore wind.
Six Iowa gas stations were
forced to stop selling the
alternative fuel E15 as of
June 1. Monte Shaw,
executive director of the
Iowa Renewable Fuels
Association (IRFA), said
during a press conference
today that the halt in E15
sales is due to summer fuel
blending volatility limits
caused by “Big Oil's
monopoly power over [fuel]
distribution.”
Everything you do on
Facebook, Google or any
other online service is
protected, right? There are
strict privacy guidelines in
place that keep your data
out of the hands of
government or third parties.
Well, that's at least what
we thought until yesterday.
"Maybe it's because my legal
training or my experience as
a prosecutor, judge or D.A.,
but to me, the United States
Constitution is like a rock;
the very foundation upon
which our country is built.
But America is changing,
it's changing before our
very eyes. Our Founding
Fathers wouldn't even
recognize the America of
today." [Excellent VIDEO
presentation]
The Kamchatkan volcano
Shiveluch has thrice emitted
columns of hot volcanic ash
and gas. The tallest plume
reached nine kilometers
above the sea level, the
Kamchatkan branch of the
Russian Academy of Sciences'
Geophysical Service reported
on Sunday.
One of Libya's highest
military officers resigned
Sunday after clashes between
protesters and a
government-aligned militia
he was in charge of left 31
people dead in the eastern
city of Benghazi, the
deadliest such violence in a
country where armed factions
hold sway.
The Water and Wastewater
Equipment Manufacturers
Association (WWEMA), along
with 14 groups ranging from
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
to the National Taxpayers
Union to the National
Association of Water
Companies, today sent a
letter to all members of the
U.S. Congress urging them to
oppose legislation that
would impose domestic
content rules on funding for
the nation’s much-needed
infrastructure projects.
-
Two key problems caused by glyphosate in
the diet are nutritional deficiencies,
especially minerals, and systemic
toxicity
-
Glyphosate is possibly "the most
important factor in the development of
multiple chronic diseases and conditions
that have become prevalent in
Westernized societies,” according to
researchers
-
Your gut bacteria are a key component of
glyphosate’s mechanism of harm, as
microbes have the pathway used by
glyphosate to kill weeds
-
Glyphosate causes extreme disruption of
microbes’ functions and lifecycles.
What’s worse, glyphosate preferentially
affects beneficial bacteria, allowing
pathogens to overgrow
-
Two key problems in autism unrelated to
the brain yet clearly associated with
the condition are both linked with
glyphosate exposure: gut dysbiosis, and
disrupted sulfur metabolism/impaired
sulfate transport
Researchers in Israel say a
mysterious monument found
beneath the Sea of Galilee
once stood on dry land
around 6,000 years ago.
Researchers at the
University of Southampton
have proposed an answer to
the long-running debate as
to how stable the Earth
system is.
Earth, with its core-driven
magnetic field, oceans of
liquid water, dynamic
climate and abundant life is
arguably the most complex
system in the known
Universe. Life arose on
Earth over three and a half
billion years ago and it
would appear that despite
planetary scale calamities
such as the impacts of
massive meteorites, runaway
climate change and increases
in brightness of the Sun, it
has continued to grow,
reproduce and evolve ever
since.
The boy found the loaded gun
in the home within minutes
of arrival, asked a question
about it and pulled the
trigger, Prescott Valley
Police spokesman Brandon
Bonney said.
An award-winning Oklahoma
television meteorologist has
been criticized as
"irresponsible" for telling
viewers on Friday to get in
their cars and flee
approaching tornadoes, and
some are blaming him for
putting people in grave
danger on clogged roads.
Nasa's ageing Opportunity rover on Mars has
just made what may be one of its most
significant discoveries to date.
The nine-year-old robot has identified
rock laden with what scientists believe to
be clay minerals.
Their presence is an indication that the
rock, dubbed Esperance, has been altered at
some point in the past through prolonged
contact with water.
Solar power generation on California's
electricity grid reached an all-time high
Friday, totaling enough to power more than
1.5 million homes, state officials said
Sunday.
The record of 2,071 megawatts hit at
12:59 p.m. Friday, said Steven Greenlee with
the California Independent System Operator,
which operates the state's electricity grid.
C1 event observed.
There are currently 1
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk. Solar
activity is expected to be
very low with a chance for a
C-class flares and a slight
chance for an M-class flare
on days one and two (11 Jun,
12 Jun) and expected to be
very low with a chance for a
C-class flares on day three
(13 Jun). The
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet
levels
Some things are fun to like
and share. Some touch your
heart and some can save your
life and the life of people
you care about.
This post is one that can
save your life and that of
the people it touches. I
cannot urge you strongly
enough to like, to share, to
friend and to forward this
post.
The protests that have
convulsed Istanbul, Ankara
and other Turkish cities in
recent days were entirely
unexpected but they embody a
mood of frustration, anger
and disempowerment that has
been building for years. A
diverse—and by no means
united—cross section of
Turkish society feels
increasingly resentful of
the direction the country is
taking under Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, its divisive but
hugely successful prime
minister. The scale of the
protests will eventually
diminish, but the prospect
of increased social unrest
over a prolonged period has
risen significantly.
Demand for solar
photovoltaic (PV) panels in
the US is forecast to grow
significantly during 2013
and post another record high
of 4.3 gigawatts (GW), an
increase of almost 20%
compared to 2012, according
to the latest NPD Solarbuzz
North America PV Markets
Quarterly. Solar PV
demand from the US market
now contributes over 12% of
annual global demand,
compared to just 5% three
years ago.
Scientists warn a
solar storm could leave
Britain and the United
States without power for
days or even months as solar
activity approaches a peak
in 2015.
The inner workings of
bizarre and potentially dangerous
earthquakes that break the seismic sound
barrier creating a sonic boom have been
confirmed in laboratory experiments.
And these events -- known as supershear
earthquakes -- may be more common than
previously thought, report scientists in
today's issue of the journal Science
.
Syrian government forces are reported to be
preparing for a major offensive on
rebel-held parts of the northern city of
Aleppo and its surroundings.
A Syrian security source said it would
start "in the coming hours or days".
Opposition activists in the city told the
BBC that military reinforcements, including
Hezbollah fighters, had been sent to parts
of Aleppo.
A simple Google search will
result in hundreds, if not
thousands of instances when
a law-abiding American
shoots an intruder and ends
up getting arrested...
By educating key
stakeholders on the true
value of water, utilities
can better position
themselves to secure
much-needed and long-overdue
funding. [sic]
-
Studies have repeatedly shown artificial
sweeteners stimulate appetite, increase
carbohydrate cravings, stimulate fat
storage and weight gain. One recent
study found both saccharin and aspartame
cause greater weight gain than sugar
-
Processed meats increase your risk of
cancer, especially bowel cancer, and NO
amount of processed meat is "safe." So
ditch the deli meats and opt instead for
fresh organically-raised grass-fed or
pastured meats, or wild caught salmon
-
Margarine and vegetable oils are two of
the absolute worst fats to eat. Both
contain heart-harming trans fats, for
example. Your best alternative for
cooking is coconut oil, as it’s less
susceptible to heat damage
-
Microwave popcorn, table salt,
non-organic produce like potatoes, and
unfermented soy products, including soy
protein isolate, are more harmful than
beneficial as they all contain hazardous
contaminants
-
Most canned foods contain BPA, a toxic
chemical. Acidity causes BPA to leach
into your food. Stick to fresh fruits
and vegetables, or switch over to brands
that use glass containers
instead—especially for acidic foods like
tomatoes
The sun emitted a mid-level
solar flare, peaking at 6:49
p.m. on June 7, 2013. Solar
flares are powerful bursts
of radiation. Harmful
radiation from a flare
cannot pass through Earth's
atmosphere to physically
affect humans on the ground,
however -- when intense
enough -- they can disturb
the atmosphere in the layer
where communications signals
travel. This disrupts the
radio signals for as long as
the flare is ongoing,
anywhere from minutes to
hours.
"I am truly perplexed that
so many of my friends are
against another mosque being
built in Toronto . ..
That is why I also propose
that two nightclubs be
opened next door to the
mosque, thereby promoting
tolerance from within the
mosque.
Secretary of Agriculture Tom
Vilsack renewed a historic
agreement with U.S. dairy
producers to accelerate the
adoption of innovative
waste-to-energy projects and
energy efficiency
improvements on U.S. dairy
farms, both of which help
producers diversify revenues
and reduce utility expenses
on their operations. The
pact extends a Memorandum of
Understanding signed in
Copenhagen, Denmark, in
2009.
American wheat farmers and a
food safety advocacy group
filed a lawsuit Thursday
against biotech seed
developer Monsanto Co,
accusing the company of
failing to protect the U.S.
wheat market from
contamination by its
unauthorized wheat.
The United States, China and
the European Union have had
initial discussions on a
possible "global" agreement
to resolve solar energy
disputes, a senior U.S.
official said on Thursday.
Ernst & Young’s (EY’s)
10th annual Renewable Energy
Country Attractiveness Index
finds that the US is again
the most attractive place in
world for renewable energy,
supplanting China, which
held the top spot in the
previous index. The annual
report ranks 40 of the most
active countries for
renewables based on a number
of factors, including
incentives, opportunities
for projects and more.
Legislation in the state
House of Representatives
would make permanent the
provision in a nearly
decade-old law that has made
it easier for utilities to
cut off service to
delinquent customers.
Three nearly simultaneous
water main breaks in Vallejo
may have been caused when
crews working on a fire
hydrant elsewhere in Vallejo
shut down water for the
repairs, a fire captain
said.
Following on Verizon’s
announcement a few weeks ago
that it plans to spend $100
million on clean power —
both solar panels and fuel
cells — for its operations,
the telecom giant announced
on Tuesday that it plans to
buy fuel cells from Silicon
Valley’s Bloom Energy to
power some of facilities in
California. The ten Bloom
Energy fuel cells (200 kW
each) will deliver more than
16 million kilowatt hours of
electricity for Verizon in
California per year, or a
quarter of its clean power
capacity plans.
When a volcano erupts, it's not just the
local area and weather that will be
affected. In fact, weather and climate
around the world can be influenced, as large
eruptions throw volcanic ash particles into
the stratosphere.
Locally, these particles attract water
droplets and therefore cause rain events. In
addition, higher occurrences of thunder and
lightening are observed in the area. But the
release of sulphur dioxide gas into the
stratosphere, which converts into sulphate
aerosol particles, reflects incoming
sunlight and creates an overall temporary
cooling effect of a much larger area on
Earth's surface.
Millions of gallons of water
flooded the streets of San
Francisco after a water main
ruptured Saturday night. The
flooding created a massive
sink hole and crews
continued to struggle with
the clean-up Sunday night.
The first named storm of the
Atlantic hurricane season
smashed rainfall totals
across the Northeast and
pushed some streams and
creeks over their banks but
sped up the Eastern Seaboard
without causing major
damage.
"In order to ensure the
growth of America's clean
energy economy and improve
energy security, we must
modernize and expand our
electric transmission grid,"
he said in the memo.
"Modernizing our grid will
improve energy reliability
and resiliency, allowing us
to minimize power outages
and manage cyber-security
threats."
-
An unapproved strain of genetically
engineered (GE) wheat has been found
growing on a farm in Oregon. The finding
now threatens US wheat exports as many
countries do not permit the importation
of GE wheat
-
Japan has canceled orders for US wheat
in response to the findings. Other major
wheat importers are monitoring the
situation, and the EU has ordered member
states to test imported wheat for
contamination
-
The House Agricultural Committee will
soon vote on an amendment that would
lend support to a potential
nullification of states’ rights to label
GMOs. Your urgent action is needed!
The document is part of a five-part
series being released by the WBA, for
industry and media use as a verifiable,
easily referenced source of information
about the renewable energy industry.
The WBA emphasizes the great global
potential for biogas, pointing to estimates
that predict biogas could consist of around
6 percent of the global primary energy
supply, or one-third of the current use of
fossil gas.
Are the CIA and the White
House more concerned about
plugging leaks or managing
spin?
A year ago, the Associated Press
discovered a foiled al-Qaida plot to blow up
a plane. Worried about the safety of an
informant in the case, the CIA asked the AP
to delay publishing the story until its spy
could be secured. The AP agreed.
Five days later, the CIA told the AP that
its national security concerns were “no
longer an issue.” As a seasoned AP team of
reporters and editors made final edits to
their scoop, the CIA backtracked and asked
the news agency to delay the story one more
day. New national security concerns?
Nope. The only concern was public
relations
June
7, 2013
-
Happiness can be identified as “whatever
gets you excited.” Once you’ve
identified that activity, whatever it
is, you can start focusing your mind
around that so you can structure you
life to do more of it
-
Simple things like eating light, talking
less and listening more, turning off the
TV and getting outdoors to enjoy nature
and getting some sunshine can bring more
joy into your life
Ski areas from 24 states
have signed the Climate
Declaration, which calls on
U.S. federal policymakers
and legislators to seize the
economic opportunity of
addressing climate change.
A natural gas pipeline
stretching from far western
North Dakota to western
Minnesota has been proposed
to increase pipeline
takeaway capacity out of the
Bakken rock formation and
accommodate the region's
rapidly growing natural gas
production.
The 2013 Atlantic hurricane
season will include 14 to 18
named tropical storms,
according to the WeatherBug
meteorology team. By
comparison, 1981 to 2010
averaged 12 named storms.
Seven to 10 of these storms
could become hurricanes with
sustained winds of 74 mph or
higher. Three to five are
predicted to become major
hurricanes with winds in
excess of 111 mph. In
comparison, 1981 to 2010
averaged about six
hurricanes -- two were
major.
The vast majority of
the scientific community
hasn’t disagreed about
climate change for decades.
We know we’re pumping more
carbon, methane and other
dangerous gases into the
atmosphere at record levels,
and we know we’re trapping
heat that will have serious
impacts on our world for
many years to come. Indian
Country isn’t going to be
spared. We should talk about
what’s coming and plan
ahead.
A beam malfunction at the
Japan Proton Accelerator
Research Complex (J-PARC) in
Tokai, Japan, on 23 May
released radioactive
material into an
experimental hall. Operators
then vented the hall,
contaminating the
environment.
Living in areas where air
pollution levels are high
raises a child’s risk of
developing insulin
resistance, a precursor to
diabetes.
Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
and three of his colleagues
have introduced S 1031, a
bill that would allow Health
Savings Account (HSA) funds
to go toward dietary
supplements without having
to get a doctor’s
prescription; the same would
apply to Health Flexible
Spending Accounts
(FSAs). The legislation,
called the Family and
Retirement Health Investment
Act of 2013, does this by
expanding the term “medical
care” to include dietary
supplements, and it would
allow spending up to $1,000
each year. A companion bill,
HR 2194, was introduced in
the House by Rep. Erick
Paulsen (R-MN).
The operator of the wrecked
Fukushima nuclear plant said
it had found another leak of
contaminated water on
Wednesday, piling pressure
on the utility to curb the
problem as it seeks
permission to release water
to the sea.
Aspirin appears to be just
as good as more expensive,
more potent blood-thinning
medication for preventing
blood clots after hip
replacement surgery,
according to new research.
Aurora Flight Sciences
announced today that it has
successfully integrated an
advanced greenhouse gas
measurement system on its
Centaur Aircraft, obtained
an FAA airworthiness
certification for flight
operations, and performed
flight tests over the
Chesapeake Bay.
The state's electric
generators will have to
lower their fossil fuel
emissions under a bill
headed to the governor.
You see, brain diseases such as
Alzheimer's and Parkinson's now occur:
- Earlier in life . . .
- More frequently . . .
- To a much more severe degree . . .
While not widely known,
there are many
simple steps you can take to
reduce your risk of
developing a
neuro-degenerative disease.
Business executives’
optimism about the U.S.
economy now stands at its
highest point since early
2007, although lingering
concerns continue to curtail
hiring plans, according to
the second quarter AICPA
Economic Outlook Survey,
which polls chief executive
officers, chief financial
officers, controllers and
other certified public
accountants in U.S.
companies who hold executive
and senior management
accounting roles.
Duke University researchers
have identified differences
in the size blood of vessels
in the eyes of individuals
more prone to developing
dementia later in life — a
finding that could one day
offer early clues to
patients more likely to
suffer memory loss and other
cognitive problems later in
life.
Carestream Health has
dramatically reduced air
emissions and energy
consumption as part of an
ongoing proactive effort to
trim its environmental
footprint.
Hackers, who penetrated the
2008 presidential campaigns
of President Barack Obama
and his GOP challenger Sen.
John McCain, were not the
work of a dirty tricks
brigade, but rather
sophisticated computer spies
employed by the Chinese
government.
China took aim on Wednesday
at exports of the European
wines favored by its growing
middle class, responding to
an EU move to impose
anti-dumping duties of
Chinese solar panels as
tensions rise between two of
the world's biggest trade
partners.
Carter Hull, an IRS Attorney
in Washington, D.C. closely
oversaw the agency’s
scrutiny of tea party groups
and other conservative
organizations in an apparent
contradiction of top agency
officials, who insisted that
low-level employees in
Cincinnati were to blame for
the now widening scandal.
A legislative workgroup
chaired by Gov. Jay Inslee
voted unanimously Tuesday to
hire a Virginia-based
climate consultant to
examine Washington state's
options for reducing
greenhouse gases that are
contributing to global
climate change.
Colorado Governor John
Hickenlooper this week
approved a controversial
bill doubling the renewable
portfolio standard (RPS) for
the state's rural electric
utilities. SB 252 targets
rural co-ops with at least
100,000 meters and raises
their RPS to 20 percent by
2020, up from the previous
target of 10 percent.
Residents of a port town south of Havana
say that their streets are constantly
flooded with raw sewage, despite promises by
the local authorities to replace damaged
pipes.
Surgidero de Batabanó, the main shipping
and fishing port on the south coast of
Mayabeque province, has to contend with an
overflow of hundreds of gallons of
contaminated water, which sometimes even
runs into houses.
Biomass power (biopower),
widely used by industrial
facilities and distributed
energy customers, currently
accounts for 3 percent of
global electricity
generation capacity and
plays a "cornerstone role"
in meeting renewable energy
targets, according to
Navigant Research.
Researchers have fastened
special tags and sensors
onto the heads of elephant
seals in the Southern Ocean
in order to collect
temperature, pressure, and
salinity measurements. The
tags transmit a stored
profile to a satellite with
the animals hit surface to
breathe.
During May 2013,
ENSO-neutral continued, as
reflected by the persistence
of near-average sea surface
temperatures (SSTs) across
much of the equatorial
Pacific Ocean
"The survey EPA released
today shows that the
nation's water systems have
entered a rehabilitation and
replacement era in which
much of the existing
infrastructure has reached
or is approaching the end of
its useful life. This is a
major issue that must be
addressed so that American
families continue to have
the access they need to
clean and healthy water
sources." In the EPA's most
comprehensive effort yet to
assess water system
infrastructure nationwide."
The EU Parliament in
Brussels is calling for a
breakthrough green renewable
energy program, Project Volt
Gas Volt (VGV), as a
comprehensive solution to
global warming and energy
independence.
The Federal Housing
Administration may need as
much as a $1 billion rescue
package before the end of
the year to bolster its
reserves despite efforts to
shore up its finances with
higher mortgage insurance
premiums, a Senate
subcommittee was told
Tuesday.
The report states a
subcontractor was doing
welding work on a conveyer
belt system used to move
coal from trains to storage
areas when sparks ignited
the coal and coal residue on
the belts. A stack of coal
also caught on fire after
burning pieces of conveyer
belt fell on it.
When workers break ground for a plant at
the Humboldt Industrial Park on June 21 they
plan to install the first of 200 flywheels
that will regulate energy for the electrical
grid.
The flywheels spin to store electricity
and slow to release electricity.
Pollsters at Gallup said
Tuesday they have identified
flawed methods that
contributed to their
incorrect prediction that
Mitt Romney would win the
2012 presidential election,
but they are still working
to determine how to better
identify who is likely to
vote.
Tens of thousands of
Germans, Hungarians and
Czechs were evacuated from
their homes on Wednesday as
soldiers raced to pile up
sandbags to hold back rising
waters in the region's worst
floods in a decade.
The emission reduction
requirements on automobiles
and trucks are resulting in
improving air quality in the
Los Angeles area. They have
significantly reduced Ozone
concentrations, a principal
component of the smog that
has been so common in the
area.
Republican Gov. Pat McCrory
endorsed solar energy -- and
the incentive policies that
support solar and other
renewables -- in a public
show of support for programs
that some lawmakers in his
own party have vowed to
dismantle.
When Chelsey Ramer, a
graduating senior at
Escambia Academy wore an
eagle feather during her
high school graduation
ceremony on May 23, she was
denied her transcripts, high
school diploma and fined
copy,000. The 17-year-old
member of the Poarch Band of
Creek Indians knew there
would be consequences, but
what she and her family
didn’t expect was the amount
of support they would
receive.
Most Fed Districts reported
increases in consumer
spending, although the gains
were characterized as
“slight to moderate.” Late
winter weather was cited as
weighing on retail activity
in some Districts, although
demand for home furnishings,
furniture, and appliances
was strong. Vehicle sales
increased moderately across
the country.
Coronal holes are areas
where the Sun's corona is
darker, and colder, and has
lower-density plasma than
average. In this case it
looks like a giant hole in
the middle of the sun. These
were first found when X-ray
telescopes in the Skylab
mission were flown above the
Earth's atmosphere to reveal
the structure of the corona.
An extensive coronal hole
rotated towards Earth
recently (May 28-31, 2013).
The massive coronal area is
one of the largest seen in a
year or more. Coronal holes
are the source of strong
solar wind gusts that carry
solar particles out to our
magnetosphere and beyond.
Solar wind streams take 2-3
days to travel from the Sun
to Earth, and the coronal
holes in which they
originate are more likely to
affect Earth after they have
rotated more than halfway
around the visible
hemisphere of the Sun, which
is the case here.
For the first time in the
history of the human
species, we have clearly
developed the capacity to
destroy ourselves. That’s
been true since 1945. It’s
now being finally recognized
that there are more
long-term processes like
environmental destruction
leading in the same
direction, maybe not to
total destruction, but at
least to the destruction of
the capacity for a decent
existence.
Illinois legislators last
month overwhelmingly
approved new fracking
regulations to address
safety concerns over the
rapidly expanding procedure.
Viewing the progress of clean tech in the
U.S. through the lens of national politics
can get pretty depressing. Continual
gridlock on Capitol Hill, the federal budget
sequester, key leadership positions (like
administrator of the Environmental
Protection Agency) being held hostage by
partisan politics – it all makes fertile
ground for breeding cynicism and
despondency.
But beyond the Beltway, there’s a much
brighter outlook.
Iran has witnessed a rare
show of political dissent in
the run-up to next week’s
presidential election after
mourners chanted anti-regime
slogans at the mass funeral
of a dissident cleric,
according to amateur video
footage.
"Americans were affected by
the culture of political
intimidation and
discrimination that was
cultivated by this
targeting," said Camp, a
Michigan Republican. "For
simply exercising their
First Amendment rights --
the freedoms of association,
expression and religion, the
IRS singled them out."
Most Japanese suppliers and
end-users have either locked
in or are seeking to seal
term contracts for LPG from
the US to diversify supplies
to meet steady demand,
piling pressure on the
Middle Eastern market and
spurring global trade among
Japanese firms, industry
officials and traders said
recently.
The Free Syrian army, which
had held on to the city for
months through increasingly
fierce bombardment and
attacks by the regime,
killing hundreds, conceded
that they had to make a
retreat from the town that
lies on a key supply route.
For the first time, an
experiment on animals shows
that exposure to the
environmental toxin lead
could cause people to
develop the severe mental
disorder schizophrenia.
A year after adopting changes to its
long-standing forestry policy, Brazil is
struggling to implement the new rules,
adding to uncertainty that appears to be
fueling an increase in clearing of the
Amazon rainforest.
Regulators, landowners and farmers say
they don't know how long it will take to
enact the new "forestry code," a dense law
that, among other rules, governs the amount
of woodland that must be preserved on farms
and other productive property.
The governor wants the
University of Maine, rather
than the Norwegian company
Statoil, to have a shot at
securing the support of
electric ratepayers for its
offshore wind energy pilot
project. LePage has long
opposed supporting Statoil's
pilot wind energy project
with funds from electric
ratepayers.
The nation's first
grid-connected offshore
floating wind turbine
prototype is being
recognized by the Department
of Energy. Located off the
coast of Maine, the project
is the world's first
concrete-composite floating
platform wind turbine
deployment.
The Oklahoma tornado that
killed four storm chasers
Friday in El Reno was wider
than Manhattan and had winds
almost as strong as the
record-breaking 1999 Moore
tornado.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) wants to classify coal ash -- a
byproduct of coal-burning that is used as an
additive to concrete and drywall, and used
to mitigate acid drainage from surface mines
-- as a hazardous waste.
In response, during the previous Congress
McKinley sponsored HR 2273, the Coal
Residuals Reuse and Management Act, to
enable states to adopt and run permit
programs to manage and dispose of coal ash
and other fossil fuel combustion products.
In a study published in the
journal Science
Translational Medicine,
a small group of MS patients
were treated intravenously
with an infusion of their
own white blood cells, which
had been engineered to carry
billions of myelin antigens.
Researchers hoped the cells
would teach the body to stop
attacking myelin.
MidAmerican Energy won’t be
building a nuclear unit in
Iowa anytime soon and will
be refunding much of the
public money collected to
help it finance a nuclear
feasibility study in the
state.
Now Bloomberg reports that
the biotech giant actually
resumed field tests of GMO
wheat in 2011: The world’s
largest seed company
planted 150 acres of wheat
in Hawaii last year
Whether you believe our
universe is unique or one of
many coexisting realities,
there's a scientific model
that backs up your views.
Cosmologists on both sides
debated the issue June 1
here at the "Multiverse:
One Universe or Many?" panel
at the World Science
Festival.
It's official. An Oregon
farmer has found an
unapproved, illegal variety
of wheat, genetically
engineered by Monsanto to
withstand the company's
toxic RoundUp herbicide,
growing on his property.
Difference in
appearance was and is a
result of (subtle or blunt)
contact and intermingling,
which are cultural
constants, the world
over—the physical,
geographical, political and
strategic evolution of all
humans....
Our walk of
plurality—a learned balance
from the inalienable
habitants of the soil, and
as representatives of
newcomers—is the fluid
new face of Native America.
"The company is continuing
to work on the generator
vibration issue," said Neil
Sheehan of the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission. "It
is also addressing leakage
from a seal on a reactor
coolant pump. The seal was
installed during the last
refueling and maintenance
outage for the unit about 18
months ago. FirstEnergy is
conferring with Westinghouse
on the seal leakage."
Top secret PRISM program
claims direct access to
servers of firms including
Google, Skype and Yahoo
•
Companies deny any knowledge
of program in operation
since 2007
Summary: The
U.S. government is vacuuming
up millions of Verizon
customer records on a daily
basis, according to a leaked
"top secret" court order.
Here's everything you need
to know.
“Mr. Obama is proving the
truism that the executive
will use any power it is
given and very likely abuse
it,” the Times said in a
scathing editorial. “That is
one reason we have long
argued that the Patriot Act
… was reckless in its
assignment of unnecessary
and overbroad surveillance
powers.”
President Barack Obama's top
national security adviser
Tom Donilon is resigning and
will be replaced by Susan
Rice, the U.S. ambassador to
the United Nations who has
been a lightning rod for
Republican criticism over
faulty explanations for the
attack that killed four
Americans in Benghazi,
Libya.
Did the Internal Revenue
Service scandal begin when
the Obama administration
aggressively tried to deny
tax-exempt status to
pro-Israeli groups that
funded settlements on the
West Bank in defiance of its
wishes? The IRS seems to
have used tax audits to try
to cripple these Jewish
groups. When the
Citizens United
decision came down, did
President Obama turn the
guns focused on the
conservative Jewish groups
to fire on Republican
political organizations?
Obesity surgery worked much
better at reducing and even
reversing diabetes than
medication and lifestyle
changes in one of the most
rigorous studies of its
kind. But the researchers
and others warn that
possible serious
complications need to be
considered.
The global oil market
remains currently
oversupplied helped by
"staggering" US production
gains which are eating into
the demand for OPEC's oil,
according to BP's chief
economist, Christof Ruhl.
Booming volumes of
unconventional light, tight
oil output from the US are
forcing OPEC to consider
idling more of its
production capacity in order
to prop up oil prices, Ruhl
said late Thursday.
There is an age-old idea
that I have found to be
simple but profound: You
create what you expect. The
meaning behind this idea is
powerful. Quite simply, we
all have the power to affect
the outcome of our lives
based on what we truly
believe will happen. I know
this can sound like a cheesy
self-help mantra, but it's
true. Successful people,
heroes, and victors alike
never quit, never-say-die,
and keep their eyes on the
prize. They work their tails
off until they accomplish
their goals. People who fail
miserably over the long-haul
of their life do so because
at some point they give up,
quit and sulk in their own
shame and defeat. To the
self-reliant and personally
responsible American, this
is not a new concept. In
fact, this idea was what our
nation was founded upon.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif,
formally elected by parliament on Wednesday,
again called for an end to U.S. drone
strikes aimed at militants which many view
as a breach of
Pakistan's
sovereignty.
Ousted in a bloodless military coup in 1999,
Sharif won enough seats in the May 11
general elections for his
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)
party to operate without a coalition.
During an address to
pilgrims in St. Peter's
Square today, Pope Francis
encouraged environmental
action and spoke out against
food waste, saying that
"throwing food away is like
stealing from the tables of
the poor, the hungry."
The water table beneath three Arizona
coal ash landfills lies 300 to 900 feet
deep. The ground is tightly packed clay. The
sites lie miles from populated areas.
But does that mean it's safe to bury
nearly 9 million pounds a year of toxic
materials in coal ash in unlined landfills?
While fire management officials are
working on how to attack two major wildfires
in northern New Mexico, others are focusing
on what can be done to prevent more fires
from starting the same way in the future.
Both the Tres Lagunas Fire north of Pecos
and the Thompson Ridge Fire northeast of
Jemez Springs were determined to be caused
by sparking from power lines that came down
in windy conditions. The 2011 Las Conchas
Fire, the largest recorded fire in state
history, having burned more than 150,000
acres, was also ignited by a tree falling
onto a power line.
"The nascent industry is
facing an uphill struggle,"
with public acceptance the
chief issue, Tim Gould,
senior energy analyst at the
International Energy Agency
said.
It's not just your cell
phone calls. Nine Internet
companies have been giving
your emails, videos, photos
and more to the NSA and FBI,
The Washington Post reports.
Solar activity has been at
very low levels for the past
24 hours. There are
currently 4 numbered sunspot
regions on the disk. Solar
wind speed, as measured by
the ACE spacecraft, reached
a peak speed of 539 km/s.
The geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet to
minor storm levels on days
one and two (07 Jun, 08 Jun)
and quiet to unsettled
levels on day three (09
Jun).
The Catawba Riverkeeper
Foundation asked a
Mecklenburg County court
Thursday for permission to
join North Carolina's
lawsuit over coal-ash
contamination at Mountain
Island Lake...
The suit cited leaks from
basin dams into the lake,
which is Charlotte's main
water supply, and
groundwater contamination.
Sen. Marco Rubio tells
Newsmax TV that he proposed
a constitutional amendment
on Tuesday to negate
Obamacare's individual
mandate because "we want to
make it abundantly clear
that it is
unconstitutional."
"The Supreme Court ruled
that under Obamacare, the
individual mandate that
basically says if you don't
buy health insurance, you're
going to be punished with a
tax or a fine -- they argued
that it was legal," the
Florida Republican tells
Newsmax in an exclusive
interview.
Russia is the world’s biggest oil
producer and has been for quite a while —
that’s a fact. Its output has consistently
ranked above that of Saudi Arabia in the
past few years and in May, Russian average
daily output hit a new 2013 high of almost
10.5 million b/d.
Saudi output,
meanwhile, has mostly stayed below 10
million b/d in the past few years given OPEC
production limitations.
The tenkile, or the Scott’s
tree kangaroo (Dendrolagus
scottae) could be a cross
between a koala bear and a
puppy. With it's fuzzy dark
fur, long tail and snout,
and tiny ears, it's
difficult to imagine a more
adorable animal. It's also
difficult to imagine that
the tenkile is one of the
most endangered species on
Earth: only an estimated 300
remain.
South Carolina Electric &
Gas (SCE&G) announced
Tuesday it will accelerate
its plans to retire two
coal-fired power units at a
power plant near Walterboro,
S.C.
- A team of researchers has found a
new type of volcano in the rugged,
northern state and more they look, the
more they keep finding
- The most recently discovered example
lurks just below the water of a canal
that's constantly criss-crossed by
cruise ship tourists
In a procedural vote, the chamber voted
75-22 to take a step toward passage of the
legislation, which costs almost $100 billion
annually and would set policy for farm
subsidies, food stamps and other farm and
food aid programs.
The bill has stalled in the last week as
Democrats and Republicans have not been able
to agree on the more than 150 amendments to
the bill.
With rising concern about ocean
degradation and the sustainable use of ocean
resources, small island states must build
scientific expertise that goes beyond their
national needs and that benefits the oceans
generally, a meeting of UN scientific
experts has heard.
Small island developing states (SIDS) are
the "custodians" of vast ocean spaces that
are important for global food security,
biodiversity, natural resources and carbon
sequestration, and broader sustainable ocean
policies will in turn enhance their own
economic development, say experts.
Strong
solar storms can
damage satellites in space
and, if aimed at
Earth, can interfere
with communications
infrastructure and power
grids on the ground.
Conference attendees
discussed potential
vulnerabilities in existing
infrastructure, and how they
can be made more robust.
Space weather researchers
also highlighted ongoing
mitigation efforts,
including improvements in
technology and modeling that
may help predict future
storms
Iowa's vast crop of wind turbines is
about to grow even larger.
Last month, the state's largest energy
company, MidAmerican Energy, announced it
will add more than 650 turbines to Iowa's
wide open spaces by 2015.
The world has made “steady
but modest progress” in
improving global access to
electricity and safe cooking
fuels, increasing energy
efficiency and adding
renewable sources to the
world’s energy mix, said
Vivien Foster, energy unit
sector manager at the World
Bank’s sustainable energy
department, at a recent
briefing in London.
-
According to new research, clenching
your fist may temporarily change the way
your brain functions in a way that
boosts your memory
-
Remarkably, those who clenched a ball in
their right hand before memorization and
in their left hand before recall boosted
their memory scores by 15 percent
compared to a control group
-
This memory trick works because making a
fist can increase activity in your brain
on the opposite side (so if you clench
your right fist, activity in the left
brain hemisphere increases)
-
Simple lifestyle strategies, including
exercise, proper sleep and eating right,
also work to boost and protect your
memory and overall brain health
Green groups opposed to
overhead power lines to
supply electricity to the
biggest lots in the city's
biggest high- tech
industrial park were hit
with a one-two punch in a
report Monday.
There's a movement happening
in America... You see, many
people have experienced an
awakening over the last few
years. Their eyes have been
opened to reality for the
very first time... They've
realized that the system
built around us is fragile.
This weeks ISM report
confirmed what was already
visible in the Markit PMI
figures - the "spring
slowdown" in US
manufacturing is here. The
table below shows the
breakdown of the
month-over-month changes -
orders and production seem
to be the main drivers.
Weakness in Backlog of
Orders does not bode well
for the sector going
forward.
How the Fast Market for
'Zero Day' Exploits Puts Us
All in Danger
Why Iran is Sure to Elect a
President Loyal to Khamenei
Syria Crisis Escalates as
Rebels Take UN Post on
Israeli Border
Talks to Open Kaesong Won't
Impact Nuclear Negotiations
Can a New Prime Minister
Make a Difference in
Pakistan?
G8 Summit Will Test Limits
of Counterterrorism
Cooperation
Ethnic Tensions Running High
in London as Summer Starts
'Pussy Riot' Saga Highlights
Putin's Growing Insecurity
“I started singing at
the age of 10, and I have
shared my songs with many
people,” Begaye said. “I
sing because it’s a source
of healing for my people.”
Although the US trade
deficit widened in April,
the number ended up being
better than expected.
Furthermore, the March trade
deficit was revised lower
than originally reported.
The Solar Electric Power
Association (SEPA) has
released its sixth annual
Top 10 Utility Solar
Rankings Report. The sixth
edition ranks utilities
nationally and by utility
type and includes more than
260 of the most solar-active
utilities. This represents
96 percent of the U.S. solar
electric power market based
on the amount of new solar
power interconnected by U.S.
electric utilities.
Tropical Storm Andrea has
formed in the Gulf of
Mexico, the National
Hurricane Center in Miami
reported late this
afternoon. It is the first
named storm of the 2013
Atlantic hurricane season.
The expected U.S. "Great
Recovery" hasn't
materialized and the economy
has fallen short of even
normal growth, according to
a new forecast.
The
second-quarter UCLA Anderson
Forecast said the growth of
real gross domestic product
— meaning the
inflation-adjusted value of
goods and services produced
— is too small to help the
nation climb out of its
slump.
Nowadays Earth is perfectly
lovely but once it was a
barren rock. So how did
life arise on such an
unpromising property? In
fact, new research shows
that life on Earth may have
come from out of this world.
Connecticut has taken a
first important step. The
House version of its Label
GMO bill (which ANH-USA
helped draft) passed the
Connecticut Senate
unanimously on Saturday, and
passed the legislature 134
to 3 on Monday. Our hope is
that this bill will inspire
neighboring states to take
similar action so the
trigger can come into effect
as quickly as possible.
If the United States is able
to mass produce shale gas,
could not other countries
with huge deposits do the
same? Not necessarily, says
a new study, which points to
the technical challenges and
greater costs that may slow
progress elsewhere.
The US Department of
Interior on Thursday
extended the comments
deadline for a proposed rule
governing hydraulic
fracturing on public lands
by an additional 60 days
after industry groups
protested the original
30-day comment window.
Freddie Mac (OTCQB:
FMCC) yesterday
released the results of its
Primary Mortgage
Market Survey®
(PMMS®), showing fixed
mortgage rates climbing
higher for the fifth
consecutive week on concerns
the Federal Reserve may slow
its bond purchases amid a
strengthening economy. This
marks the first time the
average 15-year fixed-rate
mortgage has gone above 3
percent since the week of
May 24th of last year.
US nuclear power plant
operators might have to
spend nearly $3.6 billion
over the next three to five
years on modifications to
the country's 102 nuclear
units in response to the
Fukushima I accident in
2011, according to a Platts
survey of companies.
The economic landscape is
becoming brighter. Or should
we say “greener.” The
Department of Energy’s
National Renewable Energy
Laboratory says that
residential and commercial
consumers are choosing to
buy renewable energy.
Vermont has become the 17th
state to get rid of criminal
penalties for the possession
of small amounts of
marijuana.
If you have commonly available pesticides
in your home or garage, take a look at that
teeny tiny print on the label. “Harmful or
fatal if swallowed” ... “Harmful or fatal if
absorbed through skin contact” ... “Harmful
or fatal if inhaled” ... “Do not get on skin
or clothing.”
They aren’t kidding.
In a rare showing of
bipartisanship, the Senate
hopes to repair a hopelessly
broken system.
Sens. Frank R. Lautenberg
(D-NJ), who died this week
at the age of 89, and David
Vitter (R-LA) recently
introduced legislation to
address toxic chemicals in
household and manufacturing
products. S 1009, the
Chemical Safety Improvement
Act (CSIA), will try to plug
the holes in the
thirty-seven year old Toxic
Substances Control Act
(TSCA), one of the few
pieces of legislation that
has never been amended.
The Obama administration is collecting
the telephone records of millions of
U.S.-based Verizon Communications Inc.
customers, relying on a secret court order
obtained under a George W. Bush
administration policy that sparked a
national controversy, the Guardian newspaper
reported.
An administration official today defended
such information collection as a “critical
tool in protecting the nation from terrorist
threats.”
Voluntary demand for carbon
offsetting grew 4 percent in
2012, when buyers committed
more than $523 million to
offset 101 million metric
tons of greenhouse gas
emissions, according to this
year's State of the
Voluntary Carbon Markets
report, produced by
Bloomberg New Energy Finance
and Forest Trends' Ecosystem
Marketplace.
Working gas in storage was
2,141 Bcf as of Friday, May
24, 2013, according to EIA
estimates. This represents a
net increase of 88 Bcf from
the previous week. Stocks
were 664 Bcf less than last
year at this time and 88 Bcf
below the 5-year average of
2,229 Bcf. In the East
Region, stocks were 110 Bcf
below the 5-year average
following net injections of
53 Bcf
June 4, 2013
Douglas’ technology utilizes variable
cylinder displacement in a standard or
hybrid automobile engine. To keep it simple,
by skipping a firing cycle in a piston every
other fire, you effectively cut fuel
consumption in half for each cylinder with
the skipped cycle. When the power is needed,
then the computer senses it and quits
skipping every other fire cycle and gives
you your raw power back.
Carbon dioxide (CO2)
emissions from coal-fired
power plants have jumped in
2013, after a decline of
13.1 percent between 2005
and 2012. This is due in
large part to greater
reliance on natural gas,
rapid development of wind
energy, moderate demand, and
the closure of aging coal
plants,..
The attorney for a farmer acquitted on
three of four charges relating to his sale
of raw milk said Saturday he was shocked
that prosecutors now want to revoke his
client's bail.
"It seems vindictive to me," said the
attorney, Glenn Reynolds. "Put a father of
10 in jail after he's largely acquitted? I'm
very disappointed. What else can I say?"
Oil spill cleanup concerns
have led the British
Columbia Government to
reject a proposed
multi-billion dollar tar
sands oil pipeline that the
Canadian company Enbridge
wants to construct across
the province.
Former UC Riverside student
builds replica human colon and feeds it
three times per day to understand impact
bacteria has on groundwater.
To better understand how bacteria impact
the environment a former University of
California, Riverside graduate student spent
nearly a year building a system that
replicates a human colon, septic tank and
groundwater and “fed” the colon three times
a day during weeklong experiments to
simulate human eating.
Firefighters worked to
protect hundreds of homes
threatened by a wildfire in
the Angeles National Forest
after shifting winds and
extreme heat more than
doubled its size Sunday to
nearly 40 square miles.
Investors have ignored poor
economic news as stocks have
risen, leaving markets now
vulnerable to unsettling
volatility and potential
losses, an organization of
the world's central banks
said Sunday.
Authorities in parts of Europe issued
disaster warnings and scrambled to reinforce
flood defences as rivers swelled by days of
heavy rain threatened to burst their banks.
Several people have died or are missing
in the floods in Germany, the Czech
Republic, Austria, and Switzerland since the
rains began on Thursday.
As America's culture of
convenience continues to
flourish, single-cup coffee
makers have become
increasingly popular among
coffee drinkers. But beneath
those expedient one-cup
coffee pods lies a growing
environmental problem.
An expensive upgrade to slash air
pollution from a power plant would boost
Central Arizona Project water costs nearly
12 percent for Tucson and other major
Arizona cities, the CAP says.
A much bigger bite - between 32 and
nearly 40 percent - would hit farmers,
including farmers on the Tohono O'odham
Nation.
Damaging winds flattened
trees and utility poles and
knocked out power in parts
of northern New England on
Sunday, flights were delayed
in New York City and a
tornado touched down in
South Carolina as the East
Coast weathered the remnants
of violent storms that
claimed 13 lives in
Oklahoma.
About 2,000 cows will be doing their duty
in Dane County to move the Gundersen Health
System closer to its goal of energy
independence by 2014.
Cow manure from three farms will be used
to create methane gas at a facility that
Dane County and Gundersen officials broke
ground for Thursday near Middleton.
The methane will be used to generate
electricity that Gundersen will sell to
Madison Gas and Electric Co.
Landsat 8 launched this
February and has been
capturing images since
April. The satellite orbits
Earth every 99 minutes and
captures images of every
point on the planet every 16
days, beaming 400 high
resolution images to ground
stations every 24 hours.
The Department of Homeland
Security, with some 240,000
employees and an annual
budget of more than $60
billion, admits it can't
find 266 foreign nationals
who overstayed their visas
and could pose a national
security threat.
As public awareness of the many economic
and energy security benefits ethanol offers
continues to grow, demand for higher blends
of ethanol is also on the rise.
This month, Wisconsin became the sixth
state to offer E15 as a fuel option for
consumers.
Grid security managers are
experiencing growing concern
over cyber security while
another serious threat,
electromagnetic pulse (EMP),
has received very little
attention. An
electromagnetic pulse attack
can have a devastating
impact on the grid,
rendering it useless perhaps
for many years.
Ethanol production in the U.S. fell 1.4
percent to 863,000 barrels a day last week
and stockpiles dropped to the lowest level
in 31 months, the Energy Information
Administration said.
Output slipped for the first time in
three weeks..
Ethiopia has not thought hard enough
about the impact of its ambitious dam
project along the Nile, Egypt said on
Sunday, underlining how countries downstream
are concerned about its impact on water
supplies.
The Egyptian presidency was citing the
findings of a report put together by a panel
of experts from Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia on
the impact of the plan to build a $4.7
billion hydroelectric dam.
The European Union agreed on Thursday to
put an end to decades of over-fishing and
rebuild dwindling stocks by 2020, as part of
a deal to overhaul the bloc's fisheries
policy.
The agreement will put an end to annual
haggling over catch quotas by EU ministers
in Brussels, widely blamed for putting
short-term economic interests above the
long-term health of Europe's fish stocks.
High in Chile's bone-dry
Atacama desert, mining
engineer Enrique Miranda
surveys a metal structure
filled with a pungent mix of
earthworms and woodchips.
Sprinklers inside the
enclosure snap to life,
shooting waste water from
the nearby mining camp into
the wriggling mass, which
serves as a natural filter.
It is obvious from the data
of the KASCADE-Grande
experiment at the Karlsruhe
Institute of Technology
(KIT) that the so-called
"knee" of the cosmic rays, a
bend in the energy spectrum
at high energies, is located
at different energies for
light and heavy particles.
We now live in a world that
is so completely immersed in
advanced technology that we
depend upon it for our very
survival. Most of the
actions that we depend upon
for our everyday
activities -- from flipping
a switch to make the lights
come on to obtaining all of
our food supplies at a
nearby supermarket -- are
things that any individual
from a century ago would
consider magic...
Few people stop to consider
what would happen if, in an
instant, the magic went
away.
We’ve all heard the adage,
“Work smarter, not harder,”
but are we living it in the
water industry? While the
status quo may have merit
and is almost certainly more
comfortable, these trying
times of big problems and
small budgets beckon a new
approach — to get smarter
about water.
After a major fall-off in
carbon dioxide (CO2)
pollution from coal-fired
electric power plants of
13.1 percent between 2005
and 2012, the first quarter
of 2013 has seen a
substantial jump in carbon
dioxide emissions from coal
– a 7.1 percent increase in
the first three months of
2013 compared to the same
period last year,..
Water scarcity is a real
societal concern, which is
heightened even more in the
power sector where it takes
a lot of water to generate
the electricity we rely so
heavily on. Coal-fired power
plants, for example, which
produce about 40 percent of
our electricity, require 150
billion gallons of fresh
water per day, straining and
depleting fresh water
supplies.
“They claim the president
didn’t know anything about
it,” Hatch told Newsmax in
an exclusive interview.
“It’s hard to believe, since
people in the White House
did. It’s pretty difficult
to believe.
The US Army Corps of
Engineers closed Lock and
Dam 24 on the Mississippi
River near Clarksville,
Missouri, Friday due to high
water, and will close Lock
and Dam 25 on the river near
Winfield, Missouri, on
Saturday, it said.
A homeowner fired his handgun into the
ground three times to stop three men from
stealing his appliances, according to the
Kern County Sheriff's Office.
The Homer City power plant was the
largest source of sulfur dioxide (SO2)
pollution in the country in 2010, emitting
more than 109,000 tons of SO2,
making it the largest source of SO2
emissions in the country that year.
The power plant will now be subject to an
hourly limit for SO2 production
-- a precedent-setting settlement...
A government watchdog has
found that the Internal
Revenue Service spent about
$50 million to hold at least
220 conferences for
employees between 2010 and
2012, a House committee
said Sunday.
-
Modern Westernized infant and early
childhood feeding regimens differ
dramatically from ancestral-type feeding
regimens
-
92 percent or more of all Westernized
people have some degree of malocclusion,
such as crowding of the teeth, narrowing
of the jaws, or both. This has
ramifications for breathing and
sleeping, which in turn can contribute
to attention deficit disorder
-
By using baby-led weaning, you can
instill in your child a desire for
healthy food choices, reduce risk of
later obesity and other associated
health risks, and promote the natural
development of your child’s oral cavity,
which could be helpful in preventing
sleep problems.
With better insulation, triple glazing
and frugal boilers, new houses can cut
energy use by up to 90 percent, which is
good news for consumers but bad for
utilities that vie with energy services
firms for their efficiency euros.
An unstoppable efficiency drive spurred
by EU regulations and national targets poses
a dilemma for utilities.
It is time to stop
discounting traditional
expertise and make use of
this vast and valuable
resource, argues Indian
scientist Suman Sahai.
Science and technology
have always been an
important part of growth and
development plans. But
accepted 'scientific
expertise' is Western,
standardised and homogenous.
From this viewpoint, the
vast body of scientific
expertise developed in
diverse societies and
cultures is discounted and
ignored.
Issa, who is heading the
House investigation into the
affair, accused the White
House of lying about the
involvement of IRS
headquarter officials in the
scandal.
He also
called White House Press
Secretary Jay Carney a "paid
liar."
What began on Friday as a
peaceful environmental
protest against
government-backed plans to
replace a park in central
Istanbul with a military
barracks and shopping center
has touched off
anti-government
demonstrations across
Turkey.
Japan's Kawasaki Heavy
Industries Ltd said on
Thursday it has developed
technology to produce fuel
for cars from farm waste at
a cost that is competitive
with imported ethanol made
from food products, such as
sugar cane.
Japan's solar installations surged by a
staggering 270 percent in the first quarter
of 2013, positioning the country to surpass
Germany to become the world's largest
photovoltaic (PV) market in terms of revenue
this year, according to IHS researchers.
Despite the huge percentage jump, Japan is
predicted to install fewer gigawatts than
China, who is forecast to be the largest
market in terms of gigawatts installed in
2013.
Secretary of State John
Kerry says that the U.S.
will sign a controversial
United Nations treaty on
arms control in spite of
bipartisan opposition from
lawmakers.
Andrea Rossi's American
partner is still not
publicly known and some of
those following the story of
Rossi and the E-Cat wonder
about not only the identity
of this apparently
well-heeled partner, but of
the motivations and intent
of that same partner. (ECatReport;
May 30, 2013)
The solar market has changed
drastically very quickly.
Growing pains have scared
many investors away, but the
positive outlook on the
health of market and
industry players will bring
many back into the game,
according to Lux Research.
A 22-year-old man died
during an anti-government
protest in a city near the
border with Syria and
officials gave conflicting
reports on what caused his
death, as hundreds of riot
police backed by water
cannons deployed around the
prime minister's office in
the capital Tuesday.
Although the prepper
lifestyle has become more
mainstream in recent years,
we are still a rather small
minority when compared to
the general population. This
likely means that you know
quite a few people who know
nothing about off-the-grid
living... or who know just
enough to think we're
nothing but a bunch of
paranoid conspiracy
theorists.
Some economists
continue to misinterpret the
recent movements in M2, one
of the measures of the US
broad money supply. People
use this indicator to argue
all sorts of things - from a
slowdown in lending to the
reason for low inflation and
even as a harbinger of a
major correction in
equities. While such
conclusions could certainly
end up being correct, it is
unlikely that the movements
in M2 have anything to do
with it.
A series of attacks last month killed
more than 1,000 Iraqis and injured thousands
more, the United Nations said Saturday.
A total of 1,045 Iraqis were killed in
May, including 963 civilians, according to
the United Nations Assistance Mission for
Iraq.
Federal officials today
designated 28 trails as
national recreation trails,
adding roughly 650 miles of
trails in 18 states to the
National Trails System.
A high school graduate in Alabama is being
denied her diploma after being fined $1,000
for wearing a feather reflecting her Native
American heritage.
U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest
Moniz announced today that
the Energy Department has
finalized new energy
efficiency standards for
microwave ovens that will
save consumers nearly $3
billion on their energy
bills through 2030. Over
the next 30 years, it will
dramatically reduce harmful
carbon pollution, equivalent
to taking over 12 million
new cars off the road for
one year.
It doesn't sound like much -- a requirement
that major utilities generate 1.5 percent of
their power from the sun by 2020. That's
roughly the output of one power plant or
wind farm.
Yet the state's new solar standard,
signed into law Thursday by Gov. Mark
Dayton, will force four investor-owned
electric utilities to generate 30 times more
solar power than they do today.
A new study by Australian
scientists projects that the
world will likely warm
between 2 and 6 degrees
Celsius (3.6 to 10.8 degrees
Fahrenheit) from
pre-industrial levels by
2100. The study published in
Nature Climate Change finds
that exceeding the 2-degree
threshold is very likely
under business-as-usual
emissions scenarios even as
scientists have long warned
that passing the 2-degree
mark would lead to
catastrophic climate change.
Presidential aides are
privately admitting to a
growing frustration inside
the White House with
Attorney General Eric
Holder’s political ineptness
in the press leak
investigations and are
hoping the embattled
appointee will resign from
office,
The New York Times reports.
Denitrification only takes
place in anoxic environments
where oxygen consumption
exceeds the oxygen supply
and where sufficient
quantities of nitrate are
present. As ice sheets
melted during the
deglaciation of the last ice
age and global oceans
warmed, oceanic oxygen
levels decreased and
denitrification accelerated
by 30 to 120 percent, a new
international study shows,
creating oxygen-poor marine
regions and throwing the
oceanic nitrogen cycle off
balance.
NYMEX July crude settled
$1.48 higher at
$93.45/barrel Monday,
largely holding to overnight
gains following
better-than-expected
eurozone manufacturing data.
Weak US manufacturing
data put downward pressure
on the US dollar, which
provided added support to
crude and product futures.
Under the new one-cart
program, provided by
Tulsa-based waste management
company American Waste
Control, residents will be
able to use the same bin for
trash and recyclables. They
will place unsorted, loose
recyclables – plastic, metal
and fiber, but not glass –
in the bottom of the bin,
and continue to dispose of
trash in bags.
But while the Brent crude
price of just over
$100/barrel is pretty much
exactly where the big crude
exporters like it, concern
is clearly growing in some
quarters about the rising
threat to market equilibrium
posed by the burgeoning
shale oil production in the
US.
OPEC ministers meeting in Vienna Friday
reached an expected agreement to maintain
the group's current crude production limits,
leaving their combined output ceiling at 30
million b/d.
The background to today’s
meeting was like many others
– would there be a surprise
although this time certainly
on the outside there was a
feeling of absolute calm. At
the opening ceremony,
everyone seemed relaxed and
some ministers were either
putting on a brave face when
asked about the threat from
shale or they genuinely did
not recognise it as a
problem for today. The Saudi
minister certainly did not!
Issa's allegations about
what the White House knew
about the IRS targeting
conservatives rattled
Democrats into sending out a
barrage of counter-claims.
A special prosecutor will be
needed to investigate the
IRS' targeting of
conservative groups, Sen.
Rob Portman told Newsmax in
an exclusive interview,
because there are limits to
what Congress can achieve on
its own.
The pow wow creates a
space on campus for Native
music and dance, Native
voices, Native art and
Native culture to be vibrant
and visible. Opportunities
are provided for the campus
and local Native communities
to build connections and
address social, cultural,
historical and political
issues facing the Native
American community.
President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that
Russia hasn't yet fulfilled a contract to
send sophisticated S-300 air defense missile
systems to Syria to avoid tilting the
balance of power in the region.
Russian officials have acknowledged that
Moscow signed a deal for the delivery of the
powerful missiles a few years ago, but have
been coy about whether any of them have been
delivered.
“Eric Holder, on his own,
should resign,” the New York
Republican told Geraldo
Rivera on Fox News. “There
are certainly controversies
surrounding the attorney
general. His latest thing
with Fox News and James
Rosen. His contradictory
testimony.
“I think
he’d be doing everyone a
favor, including the
president, if he did
voluntarily step aside.”
C9 event observed,
There are currently 6
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk. Solar activity is
likely to be low with a
slight chance for an M-class
flare on days one, two, and
three (04 Jun, 05 Jun, 06
Jun). The geomagnetic
field has been at quiet to
unsettled levels for the
past 24 hours.
Electrons greater than 2 MeV
at geosynchronous orbit
reached a peak level of 8298
pfu. The geomagnetic
field is expected
to be
at quiet levels on days one
and two (04 Jun, 05 Jun) and
quiet to
unsettled levels
on day three (06 Jun).
Dozens of crabs, three small
sharks and scores of fish
thump on the slippery deck
of the fishing boat True
Prosperity as captain Shohei
Yaoita lands his latest
haul, another catch headed
not for the dinner table but
for radioactive testing.
A new agreement will drive the exploration,
evaluation and testing of a range of
hydrogen and natural gas fuel systems.
Grid threats increase daily
- from foreign foes,
terrorists, criminals and
hackers. Utilities are
tasked with guarding against
a rising tide of potentially
disruptive intrusions into
their power grid and
electronic networks. What
will it take to keep the
power system secure - who
will orchestrate the effort,
what will it cost and who
pays?
Investors should sell U.S Treasurys and
buy bank stocks because bonds may be headed
for a “crash,” according to Bank of America
Corp.
“It’s hard to believe that the greatest
bond bull market in history will end without
some bloodshed,” Michael Hartnett, the
bank’s chief investment strategist, recently
wrote in a client note.
“Risks of a
bond crash are high.”
The owner of a Jefferson
County business reached a
settlement with regulators
requiring the repair of
environmental damage at a
site where 140,000 tons of
Ameren Missouri coal ash was
dumped.
The crashing price of
silicon may have killed off
Solyndra, but the industry
has also grown more
competitive with other forms
of energy.
Rising carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere has a
"fertilization effect" on
plants in arid regions that
has contributed to the
flourishing of foliage
there, Australian
researchers report.
A sharply divided Supreme
Court on Monday cleared the
way for police to take a DNA
swab from anyone they arrest
for a serious crime,
endorsing a practice now
followed by more than half
the states as well as the
federal government.
The House of Representatives
is moving toward passage of
its version of the Farm
Bill—the major piece of
legislation that directs
food and farm policy for the
next five years and beyond.
But initial drafts have
wildly missed the mark by
continuing to subsidize
unhealthy processed food
ingredients instead of
prioritizing healthy food
like fruits and vegetables.
Mandatory Military Service
Could Break Israel's
Government
Syria: Assad Makes Gains as
Fight Spills into Lebanon
Japan: How Abe's Crescent
Strategy Will Benefit the US
‘Money Mules’ Pose a Serious
Threat to Online Banking
Will the Bank of England
Follow the Fed's Lead?
Algerian Terror Boss
Belmokhtar Taking on the
World
Russia-U.S. Espionage
Burning Hotter Than Ever
Can a Trading Bloc Help
Latin America Outgrow
Leftism?
Iran: Sanctions, Diplomacy
Failing to Slow Nuclear
Program
No Change in North Korea,
Despite Envoy’s Visit to
China
Spain: Rajoy Risks
Everything with School Cuts
Just when you think Congress can't get any
dumber, it crafts a $1tn farm bill that
harms the poor and promotes unhealthy food
The surge in gasoil exports
from China this year has
prompted speculation of
China becoming a net gasoil
exporter in the longer term.
On May 16, Ken Silverstein
interviewed me by telephone
about the controversy over
whether Southern California
Edison (SCE) had withheld
information about problems
at its San Onofre nuclear
generating station (SONGS) –
problems that later led to
radiation leaks that
required taking the power
plant offline.
The debate around "too
big to fail" of the US
banking system is often
infused with political
rhetoric and media hype.
Let's go through some Q&A on
the subject and discuss the
facts.
Summer vacation time is
coming, and many of us will
be traveling. So it’s a good
time to remind ourselves
that whenever we venture
outside of our home states
with our firearms, we expose
ourselves to a multitude of
laws, regulations, and even
local city ordinances.
"We spend $1.5 trillion, we
lose thousands of lives, we
destroy a country, but China
is in there taking out all
the oil, and we're getting
nothing," Trump said.
The Tennessee Valley Authority is losing
its biggest customer today amid growing
concerns about rising industrial power
rates.
USEC Inc. is shutting down its Paducah,
Ky., gaseous diffusion plant, ending uranium
enrichment at the 61-year-old plant and
idling 1,000 employees over the next year.
A U.N. report on Syria said
Tuesday there are
“reasonable grounds” to
believe that limited
quantities of toxic
chemicals have been used as
weapons in at least four
attacks in Syria’s civil
war, but said more evidence
is needed to determine the
precise chemical agents used
or who used them.
The U.N. World Health
Organization's annual
assembly has adopted only
one resolution targeting a
particular country — citing
Israel for its treatment of
Syrians in the Golan
Heights.
Jumps in jellyfish populations following
overfishing is one reason why fish in the
Mediterranean and Black seas are declining,
finds a new United Nations report that
advocates factoring jellyfish “blooms” into
fisheries management strategies.
The US Monday aimed new
sanctions at Iran's currency
and the country's automotive
sector in a continuing
attempt to prevent the
country from obtaining a
nuclear weapon.
The Obama administration on
Monday announced the
approval of three renewable
energy projects in Arizona
and Nevada totaling 520 MW
of capacity, the first of
many renewable energy
projects on federal lands
and waters the new head of
the Interior Department
hopes to unveil in the
coming months.
American Islamist militants
jailed for threatening
violence over the Internet
are still posting political
writings on the Web -- while
serving time in federal
prison.
Venezuela is going forward
in the defintive elaboration
and approval for a law
guaranteeing security and
sovereignty against the
threat of transgenic seeds,
said Socialist deputy
Alfredo Urena.
A simple vinegar test
slashed cervical cancer
death rates by one-third in
a remarkable study of
150,000 women in the slums
of India, where the disease
is the top cancer killer of
women.
Wildfires, including one that could
threaten Native American archaeological
sites in New Mexico, raged across the
western United States on Monday as dry
weather and gusty winds stymied
firefighters' efforts to tame the blazes.
In southern California, 2,000 people
remained out of their homes as evacuation
orders stayed in place for a brushfire north
of Los Angeles that has spread to 30,000
acres and destroyed six homes since it
erupted last Thursday.
..."first-time buyers are willing to
spend less upfront for lower utility bills."
But more affluent buyers -- those who
expected to spend $500,000 or more on a home
-- were willing to spend more upfront to cut
their utility costs later, according to
NAHB.
And that's because, despite
the campaign to deceive
them, they were smart enough
to say "no" to the
misleading ads and
editorials promoting a
substance known to lower the
IQ of your kids and is
linked to brain damage,
chronic fatigue, cancer
growth and arthritic
symptoms...