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The power sector is
constantly evolving, but
rarely -- if ever -- has it
experienced the rapid pace
of change it faces today.
The interaction between
technological, economic and
political forces is
catalyzing what could become
the most dramatic
transformation of
electricity in the past
century.
In a new research brief,
we identify and expand upon
four primary trends shaping
and directing this
transformation globally.
Klondex Mines working with
Western Shoshones to
preserve sacred sites and
ancient landscape
The sacred sites—prayer
circles, shrines, ancient
camping grounds and
more—form the heart of a
cultural landscape
encompassing tens of
thousands of acres in the
rolling hills of northern
Nevada. Archaeologists have
dated artifacts indicating
that the Western Shoshone
and other tribes have camped
and held ceremonies in the
region for at least 14,000
years. Medicine man Reggie
Sope, of the Shoshone-Paiute
Tribes, saw even earlier
connections. “We arose
there,” he said.
150 people were treated for
stinging eyes, irritated
throats and vomiting
Beachgoers were enjoying a
leisurely, sunny Sunday on
the UK’s East Sussex coast
when a mysterious, chemical
mist settled over the area.
As Elle Hunt reports for the
Guardian, beaches
across the coast were
evacuated, and some 150
people were treated for
stinging eyes, irritated
throats and vomiting. The
haze has largely dissipated,
but authorities still aren’t
sure what it was or where it
came from.
There’s nothing like a warm
shower when we want to relax
or even warm up on a cold
winter day. The idea of
subjecting ourselves to cold
showers can actually seem
crazy at times given how
luxurious it has become to
enjoy hot showers. But the
truth is a cold shower can
provide a lot of benefits
that you may want to
consider.
The group currently hosts
anti-police workshops called
“Our Enemies in Blue.” The
group draws inspiration from
convicted murderers and
calls for violence against
the police, theft of goods,
and armed insurrection.
A
mob of self-proclaimed
“anti-hate protesters” were
filmed violently attacking
peaceful anti-Marxist,
pro-Trump rally-goers at
Berkeley with fists, sticks
and urine.
German
authorities have banned the
most influential internet
website of Antifa – the
country's militant left --
in the wake of violence that
occured last month outside
the G20 summit in Hamburg.
In an
unprecedented move against
violent left-wing extremism,
Germany’s Interior Ministry
informed the owners of the
left-wing site about the
crackdown Friday, the Local
reported.
She confronts colonialism
from the perspective of
indigenous nationhood, but
goes beyond arguing for
changes in politics, writing
in a way that enacts changes
in our thinking about
politics. Simpson
articulates indigenous
nationhood as “a radical and
complete overturning of the
nation-state’s political
formations.”
Aging brings a decline in
mental and physical fitness,
but a new study shows an
easy, fun way to reverse the
signs of aging in the brain
— dancing. Researchers
examined two different
fitness routines and found
that while both had an
anti-aging effect on the
brains of the elderly,
dancing had the most
profound effect.
A District of Columbia
Superior Court judge on
Thursday approved a
government warrant seeking
data from an anti-Trump
website related to
Inauguration Day protests,
but he added protections to
safeguard “innocent users.”
Chancellor Angela Merkel
stood up to rowdy protestors
who tried to drown out her
campaign speech with
deafening jeers and whistles
in the eastern town of
Quedlinburg on Saturday,
telling them that their
angry shouts would not solve
Germany’s problems...
“Some believe the problems
in Germany can be fixed by
screaming - but I don’t
think so and the majority of
the people here don’t think
so either,” said Merkel, who
is seeking a fourth term in
office and is the heavy
favorite to win the Sept. 24
election.
The study clearly showed
that economics — not
renewable energy sources
like wind and solar — is
responsible for killing
coal. The proliferation of
natural-gas fired power
plants, another dirty fossil
fuel, was the biggest driver
for change. Fracked-gas is
cheaper than coal, so old
coal-burning plants can’t
compete.
The bipartisan Secure Fence
Act of 2006 — supported by
then-Sens. Hillary Clinton,
Barack Obama, Joe Biden and
others — mandated the
construction of hundreds of
additional miles of secure
fencing and infrastructure
investments. Yuma sector was
one of the first areas to
receive infrastructure
investments.
A letter from EPA
Administrator Scott Pruitt
released Monday said he will
seek to revise the 2015
guidelines mandating
increased treatment for
wastewater from steam
electric power-generating
plants.
Electric utilities have
been vocal about their
opposition to the stricter
standards.
“There was a little girl
who had been in class with
the little boy all last
year,” England explained to
the Times. “They’re in
different classes now, but
she saw him on the
playground yesterday and
called him by his name. The
little girl was told ‘You
can’t do that, his name is
this name,’ and ‘You need to
call him a ‘her.'”
After the little girl
misgendered her school mate,
she reportedly was called to
the principal’s office for
discussion.
“Ice, by itself, is only
capable of flowing at
velocities of no more than
tens of meters per year.
That means the ice is being
helped along. It’s sliding
on water or mud or both.”..
… on Earth’s driest, coldest
continent, where surface
water rarely exists, flowing
liquid water below the ice
appears to play a pivotal
role in determining the fate
of Antarctic ice streams.
June 3,
2016- A coronal hole in the
surface of the sun appears
as a dark region near the
top of the sphere. These
holes are not visible to the
human eye. The image shows
wavelengths of light in the
extreme ultraviolet band.
The move from chasing down
our food to growing our own
grub left an indelible mark
on our biology. One change
resulting from the switch to
softer foods was we didn't
need to spend so much energy
chewing. Studying hundreds
of pre-industrial era human
skulls, new research has
singled out the foodstuff
with the biggest impact on
our skull shape: cheese.
Can you really have an out
of body experience on
command? Absolutely. While
this is something that will
take some time to practice
and get good at, there are
many methods to having out
of body experiences or
spiritual experiences on
command using only your
consciousness and physical
body.
There is also a purpose to
these experiences; they
aren’t simply to trip out
(although if you wish to do
that it’s up to you). These
experiences can help you
dissolve fears, move past
trauma, expand your
consciousness and much more.
I personally don’t feel
inspired to do anything
other than explore and
expand myself when I engage
in experiences like this.
As most in the energy
industry knew, the answer is
incredibly nuanced. The
187-page report, released
today, details the many
reasons impacting the
retirement of coal plants —
the fact that they are old,
in need of upgrades,
costlier to run than natural
gas plants, and not running
at full capacity — are just
some of them.
More than 1,000 people have
died from the mudslide and
flood that hit Sierra
Leone's capital nearly two
weeks ago, a local leader
and a minister said Sunday
during services honoring the
disaster's victims.
Florida’s largest
freshwater lake is thick
with toxic algae, fueling
concerns that it will spread
to other water bodies and
sparking a debate over
whether decisions by water
managers helped encourage
the growth of this bloom.
Scientists confirmed this
month that the bloom is
toxic.
Andre Taggart, a black
U.S. Marine who said he
votes Democrat, told the
Daily Caller on Wednesday
that he was angered by
Wasserman Schultz’s claims
that the investigation into
Awan by U.S. authorities is
a result of bigotry.
Taggart is a key witness
in the FBI investigation
into the Awans. According to
the Daily Caller,
Taggart rented
Awan’s Northern Virginia
home. The Marine revealed he
discovered the smashed hard
drives Awan had left behind
when he attempted to flee
the U.S. for Pakistan.
A startup called Energy and
Environmental Sustainability
is taking cactus waste from
the Milpa Alta neighborhood
of the capital and turning
it into biogas.
Two North Korean shipments
to a Syrian government
agency responsible for the
country's chemical weapons
program were intercepted in
the past six months,
according to a confidential
United Nations report on
North Korea sanctions
violations.
Oil and gas companies on the
Texas Gulf Coast were
dealing Monday with the
impact of Tropical Storm
Harvey, which was unleashing
torrential rains and
flooding in the Houston area
after making landfall
Saturday near Corpus
Christi.
Roughly 2.2
million b/d of Texas
refining capacity remained
down, as were major ports in
Corpus Christi and Houston.
The Kepler Space Telescope
is not only a dab hand at
finding exoplanets, it's
also revealing the secrets
of the Seven Sisters. Also
known as the Pleiades, this
open star cluster made up of
middle-aged Type B stars is
visible to the naked eye,
but has proved difficult to
study. Now Kepler's
instruments, combined with
algorithms devised by a team
of scientists from the
Stellar Astrophysics Centre
at Aarhus University led by
Dr Tim White, are shedding
new light on the variability
of the companions of
Artemis.
First, President Reagan
had a similar period during
his first term when his
approval rating fell to 35%
— even lower than President
Trump’s. Reagan bounced
back, carried 49 states in a
landslide reelection, and
went on to oversee an
economic boom and change
world history by pushing the
Soviet Union into collapse.
So, history tells us that
presidential approval
ratings at this point in
time are not indicative of a
president’s future success.
Second, in addition to
failing to contextualize
President Trump’s approval
ratings in history, the
elite media is ignoring the
present. Look, for example,
at the radically different
way it has treated President
Trump and President Emmanuel
Macron of France.
Qatar restores full
diplomatic relations with
Iran, ignoring demands of
Arab nations trying to
isolate Doha.
Qatar restored full
diplomatic relations
with Iran early on
Thursday and promised to
send its ambassador back
to Tehran — a move
counter to the demands
of Arab nations trying
to isolate Doha as part
of a regional dispute.
In announcing its
decision, Qatar made no
mention of the
diplomatic crisis
roiling Gulf Arab
nations since June, when
Doha found its land, sea
and air routes cut off
by the four Arab states.
The
storm known as “Harvey”
claimed the lives of five
people in the Houston area
according to local news
reports. This raised the
total number killed from the
Hurricane Harvey storm to
six. A Texas woman became
“Harvey’s” second victim
after massive flood waters
washed her away from her
stalled car.
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, two, and
three (29 Aug, 30 Aug, 31
Aug). The geomagnetic
field is expected to be
at quiet to unsettled levels
on day one (29 Aug), quiet
to active levels on day
two (30 Aug) and active to
minor storm levels on day
three (31 Aug).
The Podesta Group,
co-founded by former
chairman of Hillary
Clinton’s campaign John
Podesta, was one of six
lobbying firms who worked on
Manafort’s campaign between
2012 to 2014 to get the
Ukraine into the European
Union, NBC News reported.
There will be key times on
the path where you’re
presented with vital
opportunities
for accelerated evolutionary
growth. They are windows of
possibility where your soul
is wanting to grow and
expand into a new level of
conscious existence. So the
Universe conspires to
present a cauldron of
alchemical change, where
you’re tested emotionally,
physically and mentally to
your threshold and beyond.
It’s a bit like a new
flower, working to
breakthrough tough surface
layers. By those pathfinders
who’ve endured them, they’ve
become known as
‘initiations’. They are the
most earth-shattering,
bone-shaking you will
encounter. So it pays to
know something of what they
are about. It can help you
make sense of what’s going
on…
According to a
comprehensive study by the
Northwest Indian Fisheries
Commission, wild salmon
populations continue to
decline because of culverts,
which block fish migration;
shoreline modifications,
which affect nearshore
habitat; impervious road
surfaces, which result in
more polluted stormwater
runoff; loss of forestland
cover that provides
nutrients and shade for
streams; and an increase in
the number of wells, which
use water needed to recharge
aquifers and streams.
Social Justice Warriors
advocate in a campus
newsletter that U.S.
veterans should be "banned"
from attending four-year
colleges and universities.
The University of
Colorado-Colorado Springs
approved of someone posting
a flyer on the school’s
campus that says veterans
should be “banned” from
four-year colleges and
universities.
Anyone relying on the CIA
for tech support got a nasty
surprise this morning, as
documents published by
Wikileaks revealed a secret
project to siphon out data
through its technical
liaison service, dating back
to 2009.
Arpaio admitted to
inadvertently disobeying the
court order but said his
behavior did not meet a
criminal standard. He said
the prosecution was a
politically motivated
attempt by the Obama
administration to undermine
his re-election bid.
President Donald Trump has
issued guidance to the
Pentagon on transgender
policies. Trump has asked
the military to stop
admitting transgender
individuals, but gives the
secretaries of defense and
homeland security some
leeway.
The report said initial
jobless claims inched up to
234,000, an increase of
2,000 from the previous
week's unrevised level of
232,000. Economists had
expected jobless claims to
rise to 238,000.
The modest increase came
after initial jobless claims
fell to their lowest level
in nearly six months in the
previous week.
A
decade ago, we wouldn’t have
given a thought to the loss
of solar power. But, as
Elizabeth Shogren reports in
this issue, the growth in
solar has been so dramatic
that it is now something we
fight over regularly. Total
solar installations for
homes and businesses in the
U.S. are expected to hit 2
million next year, and in
Nevada, rooftop solar grew
eightfold between 2014 and
2016
Minnesota water regulators
are taking on a corporation
for allegedly violating its
water quality promises...
“According to 2007
agreement between the state
and the company, the company
must provide clean drinking
water to Cottage Grove,
Oakdale, Woodbury and St.
Paul Park if water exceeds
any safe level established
by the state Department of
Health,” the report said.
The state reminded the
company of this agreement
after 3M said it would not
pay for water service for
ratepayers in areas
contaminated with
perfluorinated compounds
(PFCs).
A security researcher has
found that the popular
weather app sends private
location data without the
user's explicit permission
to a firm designed to
monetize user locations.
A new technology capable of
fooling a GPS system into
believing it's somewhere
it's not is being considered
as the prime culprit in a
number of cases involving
misguided ships, and
collisions with U.S
.warships.
Whether you’re a male or a
female, odds are that you’ve
applied deodorant, shampoo,
or other personal care
products to your body. The
irony is that many of these
products aren’t actually
helping you “care” for your
body, but rather harming you
instead. For example, if
your deodorant contains
parabens, parfum, or any
other cancer-causing
ingredient, then you’re hurting your
body, not caring for it.
The memo emphasized the
important role forest
bioenergy serves in
maintaining Arizona's
forests, woodlands, and
watersheds while creating
energy for the grid. “Our
history is riddled with
examples of the devastating
economic, cultural, and
ecological impact of Arizona
wildfires,” it stated. “In
addition, state watersheds,
including streams, lakes and
reservoirs are at risk of
contamination from hazardous
runoff coming from the
burned areas. Maintaining
healthy forests and
woodlands through
on-the-ground restoration
activities reduces the risk
and severity of these
wildfires.”
A Barbie doll and a meat
grinder each packed with
explosives were the weapons
of choice of the terror cell
behind a foiled plot to blow
up an Australian airliner, a
Lebanese official said
Monday.
The bombs didn't make it
aboard the intended flight
because the piece of luggage
they were hidden in was
about 15 pounds over the
airline's limit.
A federal jury in Las Vegas
did not return any guilty
verdicts Tuesday against
four men accused of taking
up arms against federal
agents during the Bundy
Ranch standoff in 2014.
Jurors dealt government
prosecutors a stinging
defeat in the case when,
after four days of
deliberations, they returned
not-guilty verdicts on the
most serious charges and
deadlocked on a handful of
others.
“The California State Water
Resources Control Board has
released draft water
regulations for growing
marijuana in attempt to
reign in the environmental
damage that pot farms have
caused and prepare for a new
wave of legal cannabis
grows,” Cal Coast News
reported.
The future is arriving—a few
tons at a time—at Suncor
Energy Inc.’s North
Steepbank oil sands mine in
Alberta, Canada.
Human-operated excavators
scrape away the top layers
of soil to get to the
hydrocarbon-rich tar sand
beneath in much the same way
they always have. But now
they’re dumping that dirt
into driverless trucks that
use GPS systems and lasers
to find their way through
the massive mine.
"When you are going
through the Strait of
Malacca, you can't tell me
that a Navy destroyer
doesn't have a full
navigation team going with
full lookouts on every wing
and extra people on radar,"
Jeff Stutzman, an
ex-information warfare
specialist in the Navy who
works at Wapack Labs, told
McClatchy.
"There's something more
than just human error going
on because there would have
been a lot of humans to be
checks and balances."
Members of the
establishment media reacted
in horror after President
Donald Trump criticized them
again during a rally in
Phoenix in the wake of the
violent Charlottesville
protests...
“Who will Donald Trump blame
when a journalist gets
severely injured or worse by
someone acting in his name?”
wrote Tom Namako of
Buzzfeed.
“The settlement terms of the
Perry litigation corroborate
what years of testing and
field collection studies
have shown: that flushable
wipes are not causing
municipal clogs or increased
maintenance,” said Dave
Rousse, president of INDA.
“To date, despite
sensational headlines, there
is no evidence from any
wastewater agency proving
that flushable wipes are
causing clogs or maintenance
issues.”
How energy markets absorbed
gigawatts of solar lost to
the eclipse—and why it
wasn’t a big deal.
The solar eclipse that
crossed the United States on
Monday may have cast its
shadow over large swaths of
solar PV from California to
South Carolina. But with an
effect that’s even more
predictable than the
weather, grid operators
across the country were able
to manage their way through
multi-gigawatt dips in solar
generation without any
worries about keeping the
grid itself stable.
The poll found 81 percent
of Republicans surveyed
approved of Trump in June;
75 percent did so in August;
19 percent disapproved in
June, while 25 percent did
so in August.
But polled about the
GOP-majority Congress, 68
percent said they approved
in June but just 54 percent
did so in August, while 32
percent disapproved of
Congress in June and 46
percent gave a thumbs-down
this month.
Phil’s story has gained a
lot of attention from UFO
researchers, and that’s
because his story never
changed, and has been
corroborated by other people
as well. It also aligns with
a lot of other information
that has been leaked on this
subject.
Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin,
the three-star commander of
the fleet in Japan, will be
made to step down on
Wednesday in connection with
the crashes, sources have
revealed.
High-tech fabric
intended for gloves and
other military clothing
contains silver nanowires
that could be heated to keep
soldiers warm, while a
hydrogel layer would absorb
sweat
Despite many warnings about
the possibility of permanent
eye damage—and, in one case,
the advice of a presidential
aide—a lot of people ended
up looking at the sun during
Monday's eclipse without the
recommended solar filter...
University of Waterloo
optometry professor Ralph
Chou tells NPR that symptoms
won't be apparent for at
least 12 hours
Relieving oneself in open
fields is common practice in
many parts of India, but the
government is trying to
change that...
According to Kshitiz Gaur
of the Times of India,
the 24-year-old woman
claimed that her husband
refused to install a toilet
or bathroom in their home.
As a result, she was forced
to relieve herself in open
fields at night, which she
said “undermined her
dignity.” The couple was
married in 2011 and the wife
filed for divorce in 2015 at
a family court in Bhilwara,
a city in the Indian state
of Rajasthan.
Urinating and
defecating in the open
is common practice in
some rural parts of
India...
The Fed has outlined plans
to slowly begin shrinking
its $4.2 trillion holdings
of mortgage and Treasury
securities this fall and to
raise rates one more time
this year after that. Policy
decisions beyond December
are clouded by the
succession question, and
that uncertainty could
increasingly weigh on
markets, especially because
President Donald Trump has
indicated he is considering
a wide range of potential
candidates.
Microsoft researchers have
hit a milestone 25 years in
the making. The company's
conversational speech
recognition system has
finally reached an error
rate of only 5.1 percent,
putting it on par with the
accuracy of professional
human transcribers for the
first time ever.
“The idea of trying to
create crimes just because
we disagree with [President
Trump] politically, and
target him, really endangers
democracy. [It] reminds me
of what the head of the KGB
said to Stalin: ‘Show me the
man, and I will find you the
crime,'” Dershowitz said on
a radio talk show.
For Netanyahu and
other Israeli officials
the chief concern was
never the black clad
death cult which filmed
itself beheading
Americans and burning
people alive.
“Let the Sunni evil
prevail,” they say.
Israel is threatening
to escalate military
action in Syria against
perceived Iranian
interests. This week
Netanyahu declared, “we
will act when necessary
according to our red
lines” while hinting he
prefers ISIS presence in
Syria as opposed to Iran
aligned fighters at his
border...
Oil
inched up on Tuesday, lifted
by expectations of another
crude stockpile drawdown in
the United States but price
gains were limited amid the
reopening of Libya's largest
oil field.
Prices,
however, pared gains in post
settlement trade and Brent
crude turned negative as the
market was disappointed by
industry data from the
American Petroleum Institute
showing a crude stockpile
decline largely in line with
expectations and a surprise
build in gasoline
inventories
Just after the brief
moment of glory, the Hunley,
which had just become the
world’s first successful
combat submarine,
mysteriously sank.
Its demise has
baffled scores of
researchers and Civil
War buffs for more than
a century. Now, one
maverick scientist is
making the bold claim
that she has cracked the
case. After three years
of sleuthing, Rachel
Lance, a U.S. Navy
biomedical engineer who
holds a PhD from Duke
University’s Pratt
School of Engineering in
North Carolina,
concludes that the blast
from the sub’s own
torpedo sent blast waves
through its iron hull
and caused instant death
for the eight men
inside.
Pakistan has rejected U.S.
criticism of its efforts to
fight terrorism, saying it
should not be made a
scapegoat for the failure of
the U.S. military to win the
war in Afghanistan.
U.S.
President Donald Trump
unveiled his policy for
Afghanistan on Monday,
stepping up the military
campaign against Taliban
insurgents and singling out
Pakistan for harboring them.
One hundred small
streams in the Midwest were
tested for pesticides during
the 2013 growing season and
found to contain, on
average, 52 pesticides per
stream
More than 180 pesticides
and their by-products were
detected in small streams
throughout 11 Midwestern
states, some at
concentrations likely to
harm aquatic insects,
according to a new study by
the U.S. Geological Survey.
The $700 million prize
for Wednesday’s drawing is
the second largest lottery
jackpot in the game’s
history, according to the
newspaper.
But two years ago, the
odds of becoming an instant
millionaire were 1 in about
175 million, the Post said.
The odds now have increased
to roughly 1 in 292 million.
The largest solar event of
the period was a C3 event
observed. Solar
activity is likely to be low
with a slight chance for an
M-class flare on days one,
two, and three (25 Aug, 26
Aug, 27 Aug). The
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet to
unsettled levels on day one
(25 Aug) and quiet levels on
days two and three (26 Aug,
27 Aug).
Russian nuclear-capable
strategic bombers have flown
a rare mission around the
Korean Peninsula at the same
time as the United States
and South Korea conduct
joint military exercises
that have infuriated
Pyongyang.
Most of the lithium used to
make the lithium-ion
batteries that power modern
electronics comes from
Australia and Chile. But
Stanford scientists say
there are large deposits in
sources right here in
America: supervolcanoes ...
Commercial fishermen from
throughout the South Fork
last week pored over
nautical charts showing the
broad swaths of ocean south
of Long Island being
considered for future wind
energy development by New
York State—and saw a lot of
the area where they harvest
a living.
The number of major floods
in natural rivers across
Europe and North America has
not increased overall during
the past 80 years, a recent
study has concluded. Instead
researchers found that the
occurrence of major flooding
in North America and Europe
often varies with North
Atlantic Ocean temperature
patterns.
If you were lucky enough to
be in the solar eclipse's
path of totality this week,
you might have seen a few
minutes of darkness in the
middle of the day. But
that's nothing compared to
65 million years ago, when
the sun may have disappeared
for a year and a half. The
huge asteroid that crashed
into Earth back then may
have wiped out the
dinosaurs, but the force of
the impact alone wasn't the
problem. New simulations
show that particles thrown
into the atmosphere would
have blocked sunlight for up
to 18 months, disrupting the
photosynthesis of plants and
cascading into one of the
worst mass extinction events
the world has ever seen.
Sixteen years after a
controversial biodegradation
plan allowed 1,000
truckloads of orange peels
to be unloaded onto a
barren, deforested area of
Costa Rican land, a team of
Princeton researchers has
discovered unexpectedly
positive results. The area
that was covered with orange
waste is now a lush,
overgrown forest with richer
soil and more tree species
than the adjacent land that
was untreated.
Bayer recently started the
clock for the European Union
to approve its
$65bn takeover of Monsanto.
..
If approved, the merger
would be an extremely risky
consolidation of corporate
power, not to mention a
serious threat to food
supplies and farmers around
the world. It is essential
that regulators properly
investigate it and take
decisive action before it’s
too late. Campaigns that
mobilize ordinary citizens
to challenge the merger will
be a big part of encouraging
regulators to face up to
these mega corporations in
the coming months.
Thousands of Atlantic salmon
escaped from a fish farm pen
off the coast of Washington
late last week, threatening
native Pacific salmon and
causing officials to enlist
the help of citizen fishers
in an effort to catch them.
Like most salmon farms,
Cooke Aquaculture Inc.
raises its stock in
large netted pens positioned
in ocean waters. Last
Saturday, one of its nets
holding more than 300,000
Atlantic salmon in the
waters off Washington's
Cypress Island was damaged.
It collapsed Sunday, reports
Lisa Johnson of CBC News,
releasing thousands
of salmon into the Salish
Sea between Washington and
Canada's Vancouver
Island. Initial estimates
suggest 4,000 to 5,000
creatures escaped, but officials say
the true number could be
"much higher,"Johnson
reports.
The chief of
naval operations has ordered
an “pause” on global fleet
operations in the wake of a
string of destructive
collisions.
The USS John S.
McCain, an Arleigh
Burke-class guided-missile
destroyer, was involved in a
collision with the Alnic MC,
an oil tanker more than
three times the size of the
American warship. Five
sailors were injured with
ten others reported missing
after the huge merchant
vessel punched a hole in the
side of the destroyer early
Monday morning.
While there is no end in
sight to off-shoring by
Japanese companies, signs
are emerging that surging
wages in China are
encouraging at least some of
them to bring jobs,
factories and businesses
back home.
Drought-stricken areas
anxiously await the arrival
of rain. Full recovery of
the ecosystem, however, can
extend long past the first
rain drops on thirsty
ground.
According to a study
published August 10 in
Nature, the length of
drought recovery depends on
several factors, including
the region of the world and
the post-drought weather
conditions. The authors,
including William Anderegg
of the University of Utah,
warn that more frequent
droughts in the future may
not allow time for
ecosystems to fully recover
before the next drought
hits.
Water made headlines over
the past year, with the
major contamination
discovery in Flint, MI,
droughts and then flooding
in California, and questions
about infrastructure. These
headlines highlight how
vital water is to the U.S.
economy and the American
people, as well as the
challenges the industry
faces. What’s not in these
headline stories, though, is
how the industry views its
future.
Microsoft has decided
Windows Insiders don't need
to know about the bugs it's
aware of....
But until now, Microsoft
has published a list of
known issues in these
builds, which explains to
Insiders specific problems,
what they affect, their
impact, and any workarounds.
But from now on,
Microsoft won't be providing
this information as it
focuses on stabilizing the
Fall Creators Update for
general release.
Asteroids whizz past Earth
on a regular basis, and
thankfully they're usually
only a few meters wide. But
next month we're due for a
close encounter with a
monster space rock measuring
4.4 km (2.7 mi) across,
making it the largest
near-Earth object (NEO) to
come this close to the
planet since NASA began
tracking them almost 20
years ago.
Listed below are four lethal
connections between Big
Pharma and some of our most
popular consumer products,
of which all consumers
deserve to be made aware.
Nestlé and Prometheus
Therapeutics & Diagnostics
Like
The Avengers of outer
space, an all-star cast of
satellites and spacecraft
have teamed up from across
the Solar System for a
common goal. After a coronal
mass ejection (CME) erupted
from the Sun in October
2014, its journey through
space was tracked by
Curiosity, Rosetta, Cassini,
New Horizons and possibly
even Voyager 2, allowing
astronomers to study the
phenomenon in much greater
detail than ever before.
Tens of
thousands of people took to
the streets of Boston on
Saturday to protest a "free
speech" rally featuring
far-right speakers a week
after a woman was killed at
a Virginia white-supremacist
demonstration.
Rally
organizers had invited
several far-right speakers
who were confined to a small
pen that police set up in
the historic Boston Common
park to keep the two sides
separate. The city avoided a
repeat of last weekend's
bloody street battles in
Charlottesville, Virginia,
where one woman was killed.
After
deleveraging in the
aftermath of the last U.S.
recession, Americans have
once again taken on record
debt loads that risk holding
back the world’s largest
economy.
Household debt
outstanding — everything
from mortgages to credit
cards to car loans — reached
$12.7 trillion in the first
quarter, surpassing the
previous peak in 2008 before
the effects of the housing
market collapse took its
toll, Federal Reserve Bank
of New York data show. To
put the borrowing in
perspective, it’s more than
the size of China’s economy
or almost four times that of
Germany’s.
The Russian investigation
and the appointment of FBI
special counsel Robert
Mueller has become a
political weapon of the
left, one that "really
endangers democracy,"
self-proclaimed "liberal,"
author, and law professor
Alan Dershowitz said.
"The idea of trying to
create crimes just because
we disagree with [Trump]
politically, and target him,
really endangers democracy,"
Dershowitz told"The Cats
Roundtable" on 970
AM-N.Y. "[It] reminds me of
what Lavrentiy Beria, the
head of the KGB, said to
Stalin: 'Show me the man,
and I will find you the
crime.'
I don’t know about you, but
just the thought of this
concept gives me the
heebie jeebies. Are the
parasites that are so
commonly found within our
bodies capable of
influencing our thoughts and
thereby our actions, too?
This is no doubt a scary
thought that you might want
to dismiss outright, but
consider an obvious way they
could be controlling us on
some level: causing food
cravings. Often, when people
have parasites in their gut,
they are eating many foods
that are for the parasite,
and what the parasite wants,
not what they actually want.
This is one subtler example
of how a parasite can
influence our thoughts and
actions.
First Solar Inc. is
standing on the sidelines of
a trade dispute that could
give its products a
significant leg up.
The U.S. International
Trade Commission held a
hearing on Tuesday regarding
the request by Suniva for
the U.S. to impose tariffs
on imported solar panels.
The petition alleges China,
which accounts for more than
80 percent of global solar
panel production, gives
manufacturers unfair
government support.
The commission is
expected to make a decision
next month, and a finding of
harm could lead President
Trump to impose duties as
early as November.
Heavier loads combined with
substantially weaker wind
generation to boost average
real-time prices from June
to July in the Midcontinent
Independent System
Operator's footprint,
according to a MISO report.
Americans have once again
been subjected to a
dishonest, one-sided elite
media frenzy.
In what is becoming an
all too common occurrence,
the media covers an event,
distorts it, and then builds
on its own distortion,
condemning anyone who
refuses to blindly accept
their falsehoods.
All of this is done in a
tone of hysteria, designed
to both distract us from the
serious problems the Left
can’t solve and to isolate
conservatives on emotionally
hateful grounds.
For investors
wondering when the angst
about a U.S. government
shutdown or debt default
will seep into broader
financial markets, they
might want to look back at
2013 as a blueprint.
The situation
today is eerily familiar to
that four years ago. Like in
2013, lawmakers will have
little more than two weeks
to both pass a budget deal
and increase America’s
borrowing capacity when they
return from their August
recess. Not only that, but
just like four years ago,
Federal Reserve officials
are wrestling with the
decision of whether to scale
back monetary policy
accommodation.
“The day science
begins to study non-physical
phenomena, it will make more
progress in one decade than
in all the previous
centuries of its existence.”
For 32 years, scientists
have tracked the
oxygen-depleted waters that
appear each summer in the
Gulf of Mexico. This year’s
dead zone is the biggest
yet.
Low mortgage rates have
helped mitigate expensive
home prices
Rates for home
loans fell to a seven-week
low as ongoing economic
uncertainty kept a tight lid
on bond yields, mortgage
provider Freddie Mac said
Thursday.
One of the biggest struggles
that folks have is knowing
how to shop and choose the
right foods when visiting
the grocery store. And
while there are SO many
choices and a TON of
confusion at your local
grocer, they've actually
made it really EASY for you
to shop, if you know what
sections to visit, and which
to avoid.
In fact, I
can get in and out of the
grocery store with a full
cart of fat-burning
groceries in just 15 mins
nowadays, simply because I
know I'll NEVER even visit
90% of the store aisles on
most visits.
North Korea warned Sunday
that the upcoming U.S.-South
Korea military exercises
that are expected to start
on Monday is "pouring
gasoline on fire" and
considered "reckless
behavior driving the
situation into the
uncontrollable phase of a
nuclear war."
Scientists working in the
Allen Hills region of
Antarctica have drilled the
oldest ice core ever. Dating
back an estimated 2.7
million years, this ice
sample is more than 1.5
million years older than any
other previously recovered
and the data garnered from
the sample offers a rich
insight into the climate of
the planet millions of years
ago.
Taxpayer-funded PBS and NPR
are now in the polling
business with Marist
College, and like the other
networks, their polls are
often used to support
putting heat on Republicans.
On Wednesday, they announced
they had found a majority of
Americans were disappointed
with the president’s
responsive to the violence
in Charlottesville. PBS then
ignored their own finding
that 62 percent favored
leaving Confederate statues
in place, while only 27
percent want them removed.
NPR reported it once, and
then insisted that had
nothing to do with
Charlottesville.
Solar activity is expected
to be low with a chance for
M-class flares on days one,
two, and three (22 Aug, 23
Aug, 24 Aug). The
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet to
active levels on day one (22
Aug), quiet to unsettled
levels on day two (23 Aug)
and quiet levels on day
three (24 Aug).
Conservative radio host
Rush Limbaugh, during the
Thursday airing of his
nationally syndicated radio
show, claimed that the GOP
is standing aside while
“leftists” destroy America.
Limbaugh opened his
segment with a direct shot
to the media, in which he
said, “The media is dividing
this country and tearing it
apart, and because of fear
of the media, way too many
on our side are unwilling to
stop or even try to explain
or oppose this.”
“Identity politics,” he
continued, “which we have
been focusing on in recent
weeks — intensely in recent
days — is the primary weapon
being used to divide the
country.”
“America is under
attack from within. Our
culture, our history,
our founding are under
the most direct assault
I have seen in my life.
And I’m sure it’s the
same with you. We
haven’t seen anything
like this. You might
even get away with
saying that we are on
the cusp of a second
civil war. Some of you
might say that we are
already into it, that it
has already begun.
However you characterize
it, though, we are under
attack from within. And
it’s being bought and
paid for by people from
outside America, in
addition to inside.”
Limbaugh told his
listeners that he believed
left-wing hedge fund
billionaire George Soros and
other “international
financiers” are continuously
working toward the
“objective” of taking
America “down as a
superpower,” in order to
“erase the United States as
a powerful or super powerful
nation.”
A man thought to be the
driver in the Barcelona van
attack was shot dead by
Spanish police Monday after
authorities announced he
also was suspected of
killing the owner of a
hijacked getaway car.
The fugitive was wearing
a bomb belt, authorities
said.
The abundance of Sun Dances
this year demonstrates the
spiritual resilience and
generosity among a people
deeply traumatized by
historical oppression and
severe poverty
More than a dozen alleged
members of the feared MS-13
street gang were arrested
during early morning raids
Tuesday in Ohio and Indiana,
the Department of Justice
said.
Federal
prosecutors said a grand
jury had charged 10 gang
members of the "Columbus
Clique" with conspiracy to
commit extortion and money
laundering, as well as the
use of firearms during a
violent crime, in an
indictment returned in late
July.
US coal train loadings
volumes have remained
strong, and increases this
week across all the major
basins pushed totals to a
new year-high mark.
Data filed by the four major
US railroads -- CSX, Union
Pacific, BSNF and Norfolk
Southern -- for the week
ended August 11 showed
nationwide coal loadings
averaged 108.7 trains/d, up
from 106.3 trains/d the
previous week. Totals have
stayed above 100 trains/d
for four straight weeks.
The
U.S. Navy has removed the
two senior officers and the
senior enlisted sailor on a
U.S. warship that almost
sank off the coast of Japan
in June after it was struck
by a Philippine container
ship, the Navy said on
Friday.
Multiple investigations have
yet to apportion blame for
the accident that killed
seven U.S. sailors aboard
the guided missile destroyer
the USS Fitzgerald.
Walmart has partnered
with Amazon to file a patent
for a floating warehouse,
Bloomberg reported. The two
mega retailers have come
together to develop a flying
drone that would make
deliveries directly to
customers’ doors.
According to Bloomberg,
the drone would have
multiple launching pads and
operate independently or by
a remote pilot. It would be
able to fly between 500 and
1,000 feet.
The nearest sunlike star is
Tau Ceti, only 12
light-years away. It’s now
known to have at least 4
planets orbiting it, with
relatively small masses,
tantalizingly close to
Earth’s mass.
Two suspects are under
arrest in Spain after a
terrorist deliberately
crashed a white van into a
crowd of people in the
center of Barcelona
Thursday, killing 13 and
injuring at least 50.
Americans' debt level
notched another record high
in the second quarter, after
having earlier in the year
surpassed its pre-crisis
peak, on the back of modest
rises in mortgage, auto and
credit card debt, where
delinquencies jumped.
Total
U.S. household debt was
$12.84 trillion in the three
months to June, up $552
billion from a year ago,
according to a Federal
Reserve Bank of New York
report published on Tuesday.
You may think you've found
some frighteningly old
leftovers at the back of
your fridge, but they're
likely to pale in comparison
to a fruitcake recently
uncovered by the New
Zealand-based Antarctic
Heritage Trust. Found in one
of the huts used by Captain
Robert Falcon Scott during
his ill-fated Terra Nova
Expedition of 1910-13, the
"almost edible" fruitcake
lasted over a hundred years
wrapped in paper and
preserved in a tin-plated
iron alloy tin
While controversial statues
of Confederate icons who
fought for slavery come down
in the United States, Russia
is erecting new monuments to
a once-disgraced Soviet
Union dictator who killed
millions: Josef Stalin.
India's
independence from British
colonial rule coincided with
the partition of the
subcontinent into two
separate countries, setting
off unprecedented communal
carnage on both sides of the
hastily created border.
A mass
migration followed, marred
by violence and bloodshed,
as about 15 million Muslims,
Hindus and Sikhs, fearing
discrimination, swapped
countries in an upheaval
that cost more than a
million lives.
Bannon,
the flame-throwing former
executive chairman of
Breitbart News, has long
been a target of mainstream
Republican ire – and so far
has survived even as top
Trump lieutenants like Sean
Spicer and Reince Priebus
have resigned.
China moved to tighten
economic pressure on North
Korea by implementing a new
package of U.N. sanctions
Monday, but it
simultaneously had a warning
for the Trump
administration: Don’t spoil
our new-found unity by
starting a trade war.
The Commerce Ministry
announced a ban on imports
of iron ore, iron, lead and
coal from North Korea
effective Tuesday — although
China will continue to clear
goods that have already
arrived in port until
Sept. 5.
A new study by MIT
climate scientists,
economists, and agriculture
experts finds that certain
hotspots in the country will
experience severe reductions
in crop yields by 2050, due
to climate change’s impact
on irrigation.
The most adversely
affected region, according
to the researchers, will be
the Southwest. Already a
water-stressed part of the
country, this region is
projected to experience
reduced precipitation by
midcentury. Less rainfall to
the area will mean reduced
runoff into water basins
that feed irrigated fields.
The U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers has confirmed an
oil leak in the Unit 2
generator at its 810-MW
Lower Monumental hydro
plant.
Corps staff investigated
a suspected leak, reported
on Aug. 3, and were able to
confirm that a slow leak had
allowed oil to enter the
water. An estimated 742
gallons of oil slowly leaked
from the unit during about a
seven-month-long period.
For many, the commute to and
from work is a lengthy,
stressful process. According
to the U.S. Census Bureau,
it takes the average
American about 26½ minutes
to get to work. That’s
nearly an hour each day — to
work and back — to face
traffic snarls and congested
highways. That commute can
also be hazardous to your
health, exposing drivers to
an increased amount of air
pollutants that have been
linked to a whole host of
medical maladies, including
cardiovascular disease,
respiratory issues and even
lung cancer.
Look edgewise into our
galaxy’s disk, and you’ll
notice a long, dark lane
dividing the bright starry
band of the Milky Way. This
Dark Rift is a place where
new stars are forming.
The Environmental Working
Group (EWG) says the
information in the database,
two years in the making, is
far more detailed than what
water utilities or the
federal government provide
to ratepayers. The group
says the database draws on
information from 50,000
public water systems across
the country, constituting
“the most complete source
available” on tap water in
the U.S. Users can search
the database by zip code.
When we go on a diet, we
often add artificially
sweetened drinks and
low-calorie dishes to help
us meet our goal, but we may
be tricking our metabolism
into piling on even more
weight and triggering
diabetes, says a new study
from Yale University.
Thanks to advances in
supercomputing and pooling
hundreds of climate models
developed by researchers
across the world, they are
also more statistically
confident than ever in
saying that intense storms,
droughts and record-breaking
heat waves are occurring
with increased frequency
because of humans. “Ten
years ago we wouldn’t have
been able to do so,” says
Ken Kunkel, a climate
scientist at North Carolina
State University who also
works with the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration.
We all have things that we
can complain about in life.
Whether it’s the amount of
traffic we need to sit in
every day on our way to and
from work, our in-laws’
remarkable ability to push
our buttons in every
situation, or our income’s
refusal to meet the rising
cost of living, there are
always things we wish we
could change.
While we may not be able to
actively amend a number of
those challenges, we can
change the way that we react
to them. Complaining about
them might get us some
sympathy points from those
‘lucky’ enough to hear
us out, but what tangible
good does it actually do for
us?
DeLorean is a name
associated with a certain
brushed stainless steel
supercar, but now it's being
added to aircraft. DeLorean
Aerospace is developing a
two-person VTOL aircraft
called the DR-7 that
combines rotating ducted
lift/propulsion fans with an
autonomous flight control
system, allowing it to be
flown by a minimally trained
pilot
Unlike resistance heat,
which uses electric elements
to generate heat, a
minisplit heat pump (MSHP)
moves heat from one location
to another using
refrigerant, a compressor,
heat exchangers, and an
expansion valve. During the
summer, an MSHP moves heat
from inside the building to
the outside. During the
heating season, the unit
operates in reverse,
capturing heat from the
outside air and moving it
into the home. Since the
heat source for these units
is air, they are commonly
referred to as air-source
(or air-to-air) heat pumps.
EPA banned motor vehicle
waste disposal wells in 2000
and required all existing
wells in Alaska closed by
2005 to protect underground
sources of drinking
water. During a 2016
inspection of Stepping Stone
Builders, EPA found three
motor vehicle repair and
maintenance shops had floor
drains illegally connected
to a septic system. The
wells and septic system are
located within a groundwater
protection area for a public
drinking water system and
close to other public water
systems.
Researchers at Rice
University have developed a
new material that could be
used to capture carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere.
Made from hexagonal-boron
nitride (h-BN) and polyvinyl
alcohol (PVA), the foam can
soak up more than three
times its own weight in CO2,
before releasing the gas on
demand and allowing the
spongey substance to be
reused.
“Whether email, cloud
computing, location-based
tracking, or any other
digital functionality is at
issue, users consider many
types of collected
electronic data to be
private—particularly given
the personal details that
information can
reveal—regardless of whether
transmission to a third
party has occurred behind
the scenes in the creation
or processing of that data,”
the group argues.
For billions of years
bacteria dominated the
globe, but at some point a
major transition occurred
and complex multicellular
life began to take hold. The
when and why of this
transition has been the
source of great debate for
years, but a team at the
Australian National
University (ANU) has made a
discovery that could finally
answer those questions – and
it takes us all the way back
to a time when the Earth was
a giant snowball.
Although car manufacturers
are embracing alternative
power sources, they haven't
given up on internal
combustion just yet. Along
with a push towards
downsized turbo power, some
of the smartest engineers in
the world are using new
techniques to make their
engines more efficient and
powerful. Here are a few of
the most interesting modern
takes on the internal
combustion engine.
At the core of the new FE
SUV will be an overhauled
iteration of the Hyundai
fuel cell. The company has
been selling a production
hydrogen vehicle since 2013
– albeit in limited numbers
– and says the new car will
take advantage of the
lessons learned in that
vehicle. That means better
range, efficiency and
performance, all of which
are obviously good things.
Some people living near
coal-fired power plants such
as this one in Belews Creek,
N.C., have been relying on
bottled water for over two
years since high levels of
certain chemicals were found
in their well water.
Iran could abandon
its nuclear agreement
with world powers
"within hours" if the
United States imposes
any more new sanctions,
Iranian President Hassan
Rouhani said on Tuesday.
"If America wants to
go back to the
experience (of imposing
sanctions), Iran would
certainly return in a
short time - not a week
or a month but within
hours - to conditions
more advanced than
before the start of
negotiations," Rouhani
told a session of
parliament broadcast
live on state
television.
Ultimately, the question
that we should always ask
ourselves is WHY our media
is choosing to present us
with one perspective of ‘the
truth’ or the reality in
which we live, and what
purpose does that
perspective serve in shaping
our beliefs and attitudes?
North Korean dictator Kim
Jong Un has vanished from
the public eye for two
weeks, South Korean media
reported, prompting fears
that he may be preparing to
mark Tuesday’s public
holiday by firing a new
rocket.
US Gulf of Mexico Lease
Sale 249 on Wednesday was
not a barn-burner, but it
did show a measure of
competitive bidding in the
deepwater and even boasted
two eight-figure bids and
dozens more that topped $1
million each.
The high cost and long
time of conventional
large-scale geothermal
development has been a
challenge for the geothermal
sector ever since it
started. So there have been
various approaches to help
provide a faster
development.
A Mexican company has now
developed a small-scale 500
kW plant that could be
installed on exploratory
wells. The company Grupo
Enal has developed this
portable unit.
Three more protesters were
arrested Wednesday for
participating in the
toppling of a nearly
century-old statue of a
Confederate soldier in North
Carolina.
Solar capacity has been
growing at a jaw dropping
pace in India. What is
especially remarkable is the
range of stakeholders that
play a part in this
story. The central
government; national level
policy makers; national and
multilateral agencies; state
level governments; central
off-takers; state level
Discoms; private developers
taking equity risk; EPC
folks; hardware suppliers;
sources of debt finance;
corporate customers;
individual customers — the
list is literally endless.
Buildings have a
lot of surface area that's
exposed to sunlight, so why
just stop at rooftop solar
panels? We've already seen
solar energy-harvesting
windows, and of course
Tesla's solar roof. Thanks
to research being carried
out at the University of
Exeter, we may soon also
have the option of replacing
opaque exterior walls with
solar glass blocks.
Known as Solar
Squared, the transparent
blocks contain multiple
optical elements that each
focus incoming sunlight onto
an individual solar cell.
All of the cells within each
block are linked together,
and the blocks themselves
can in turn be wired to one
another, ultimately feeding
into the building's
electrical grid or a
battery.
North Korean leader Kim Jong
Un reviewed his military's
plans to rain "an enveloping
fire" around the U.S.
territory of Guam — but
opted not to fire missiles
at this time, according to
state media. Despite the
stand-down, some Guamanians
were alarmed after two radio
stations aired an erroneous
emergency alert Tuesday.
The decline of the U.S.
nuclear-power industry puts
America’s security at risk,
according to a report being
released Tuesday by former
Energy Secretary Ernest
Moniz that calls for greater
federal investment.
The report from the
Energy Futures Initiative
and obtained by Bloomberg
News says a commercial
atomic power sector is
necessary to keep
uranium-processing
technology away from
terrorists and other bad
actors as well as support
nuclear-powered Navy
vessels.
...when the receptionist
took his driver’s license
and insurance card, Dupuis
told the paper she noticed
something else he was
carrying on his belt: His
handgun.
Not long after admitting in
a WVTD-TV interview Tuesday
that she helped tear down a
Confederate
statue Monday evening in
Durham, North Carolina,
Thompson was taken into
custody.
Solar Activity Forecast:
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
(18 Aug, 19 Aug) and
expected to be very low with
a chance for a C-class
flares on day three (20
Aug). The geomagnetic
field is expected to be at
unsettled to minor storm
levels on day one (18 Aug),
quiet to active levels on
day two (19 Aug) and
unsettled to active levels
on day three (20 Aug).
A Homeland Security memo
last month outlined a death
threat from Venezuela
against Sen. Marco Rubio,
R-Fla. – an "order to have
Sen. Rubio assassinated,"
according to U.S.
intelligence – The Miami
Herald reported Sunday.
Top House Republicans are
asking Attorney General Jeff
Sessions to end an Obama-era
Justice Department program
that has ensnared firearms
dealers and other legitimate
merchants while attempting
to cut off credit to sham
businesses.
Veteran economic guru Ron
Insana says that President
Donald Trump’s latest
bluster about North Korea
forces savvy investors
beyond worrying only about
the financial markets.
On August 21, a solar
eclipse will obscure the
sunlight needed to generate
electricity at approximately
1,900 utility-scale solar PV
power plants in the U.S.
However, relatively little
solar PV capacity lies in
the path of totality—where
the sun will be completely
obscured by the moon—and the
North American Electric
Reliability Corporation
(NERC) does not anticipate
the eclipse will create
reliability issues for the
bulk power system.
Just a month after the state
government of South
Australia announced a deal
with Tesla to create the
largest lithium-ion battery
storage facility in the
world, it has now revealed
plans to build the biggest,
single-tower solar thermal
power plant on the planet
with a proposed output of
150 megawatts.
n Edinburgh student has
helped identify what may be
the largest volcanic region
on Earth.
A study conceived by
undergraduate Max Van Wyk de
Vries has revealed that West
Antarctica's vast ice sheet
conceals almost 100 newly
discovered volcanoes. The
largest of these is as tall
as the Eiger in Switzerland.
Max, a third-year student in
the School of GeoSciences,
came up with the idea by
analysing publically
available radar mapping data
of Antarctica.
Monday’s total solar eclipse
will give scientists a rare
opportunity to study the
lower regions of the sun’s
corona. Here’s what NASA
scientists will be
investigating.
It’s no secret that there’s
an opium epidemic plaguing
North America, and it’s been
a growing issue for decades.
Many people often picture
drug dealers as these scary
individuals selling pills on
streets, when in reality,
the drug pushers responsible
for the abuse of opioids,
opium, and heroin are
largely the U.S. government
and doctors
That’s right: The U.S.
government and physicians
are deeply connected to the
opium trade. You have
physicians heavily pushing
and marketing opioids, and
then you have the U.S.
government governing the
opium trade.
The Taliban called on
President Donald Trump on
Tuesday to review the
strategy for the war in
Afghanistan and to hold
peaceful dialogue directly
with Afghans instead of
engaging "corrupt"
politicians.
Written in a tone of
negotiation, the Taliban
asked Trump to study
the "historical mistakes" of
his predecessors and to
withdraw troops from
Afghanistan completely.
Elon Musk isn’t the only
visionary betting that the
world will soon be reliant
on batteries. Bill Joy, the
Silicon Valley guru and Sun
Microsystems Inc.
co-founder, also envisions
such dependence. He just
thinks alkaline is a smarter
way to go than
lithium-ion...
The appeal of alkaline: it
could cost a tiny fraction
of existing battery
technologies and could be
safer in delicate settings,
such as aboard airplanes.
The Trump administration is
demanding web host provider
Dreamhost turn over the logs
of over 1.3 million visitors
to an anti-Trump website it
hosts, the company has
revealed.
George Papadopoulos, a Trump
campaign volunteer, tried to
set up a meeting between the
campaign and Russian
officials, including Russian
President Vladimir Putin, at
least six times
between March and September
2016, according to internal
campaign emails obtained by
the Post. ....
“Mr. Manafort’s swift action
reflects the attitude of the
campaign — any invitation by
Russia, directly or
indirectly, would be
rejected outright,”
The UK's geology is unlikely
to be suitable for hydraulic
fracturing, according to
research released Thursday
by John Underhill, Chief
Scientist at Edinburgh's
Heriot-Watt University.
The report said that
while fracking in the UK has
largely been stymied by
environmental and political
opposition, unfavorable
geology means that the
technology would be
unproductive in any case.
A major battle over
funding has broken out after
a shuttered Air Force base
seven miles outside of
Sacramento contaminated
groundwater supplies in the
area.
“In a sweeping legal
fight that could affect
drinking water supplies for
thousands of Sacramento-area
residents, two water
districts near the old
McClellan Air Force Base are
suing the federal government
for $1.4 billion to clean up
the cancer-causing chemical
hexavalent chromium from the
area’s groundwater
supplies,” The
Sacramento Bee
Named for Florence
Nightingale, asteroid 3122
Florence is the biggest
near-Earth object to pass
this close since this
category of objects was
discovered over a century
ago! It might be visible in
binoculars.
President Donald Trump on
Thursday brushed off Russian
President Vladimir Putin's
decision to expel hundreds
of U.S. diplomatic employees
from Russia, instead
thanking Putin and insisting
it would save the U.S.
significant cash.
China recently announced
through a state-run
newspaper that it will not
come to North Korea’s aid if
the communist country starts
a fight with the United
States, but would intervene
if Washington struck first.
In an unprecedented move
against North Korea, China
on Monday issued an order to
carry out the United Nations
sanctions imposed on the
rogue regime earlier this
month.
China made the announcement
amid not only Pyongyang's
escalating war of words with
the United States regarding
the North Korea nuclear
missile program, but also as
President Trump was
reportedly set to order an
investigation into China's
trade practice -- a probe
which could lead the U.S. to
levy its own sanctions on
Beijing.
U.S.
coal production will see a
sustained boost over the
next two years due to
increased use at power
plants and a rise in
exports, according to the
federal government`s latest
energy projections.
"U.S.
coal production is getting a
boost in 2017 from higher
coal exports and more
coal-fired electricity
generation," said
Howard Gruenspecht,
the
Energy Information
Administration acting
administrator, as he
released the agency`s latest
short-term energy outlook
for the month of August on
Tuesday.
Spieles, a student at James
Madison University, worked
as a staffer for
Harrisonburg Votes -- a
group affiliated with the
Democratic Party -- and was
paid to register voters in
the area during the weeks
leading up to the 2016
election. Spieles’ job was
to register as many voters
as possible; he reported to
Democratic campaign
headquarters in
Harrisonburg, Va., according
to the DOJ.
The suspect was caught in a
neighbor’s driveway around
2:00 a.m., and according to
the report by WKBN, the good
samaritan told law
enforcement that he had
witnessed “two suspects
going through his neighbor’s
car.”
“As is clear from Betsy’s
three-decade perspective,
Scott Pruitt’s pledge to
restore ‘EPA originalism’ is
nothing but a pernicious
myth,” stated New England
PEER Director Kyla Bennett,
scientist and attorney
formerly with EPA, noting
that the first round of
early retirements and
buyouts are now being
processed. “In Pruitt’s EPA
it is hard to identify even
a single action to better
protect the environment.”
A large pharma company
recently came to me to
discuss energy supply and
its need for guaranteed
electricity. The
company had to take out
expensive insurance to cover
a power failure event that
could interrupt their
production line. Why is this
a big deal? We’ve all lost
refrigeration for a few
hours.
After talking with the
company, it became clear
that a power loss lasting
only 1 minute can result in
a major economic hit because
much of the pharmaceuticals
are made in large batches to
amortize the costs, and
increase production.
With a power loss, it’s not
just a temporary
interruption, it’s a lost
batch. And the market
value of a lost batch can
easily reach millions of
dollars.
A photo connecting President
Donald Trump to a white
nationalist and member of
the so-called “alt-right”
went viral on Friday — only
there was one massive
problem...
But the damage was
already done. Sanchez’s
first tweet garnered nearly
28,000 retweets and nearly
34,000 “likes.” His
correction? Just a fraction
of that: 500 retweets.
A federal judge has
ordered the State Department
to search for any additional
Benghazi-related emails
then-Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton may have
sent or received from aides
Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills or
Jake Sullivan at their
state.gov addresses.
Judge Amit Mehta, who was
nominated by former
President Barack Obama,
ruled that the State
Department should search the
state.gov emails as well,
noting "this matter is a far
cry from a typical FOIA
case. Secretary Clinton used
a private email server,
located in her home, to
transmit and receive
work-related communications
during her tenure as
secretary of state."
Air samples from the Hanford
Nuclear Reservation in
Washington State have
revealed that radioactive
plutonium and americium
particles that may have
leaked out during a
demolition of a contaminated
building on the grounds of
the former plutonium
processing complex.
Climate change activist
and former Vice President Al
Gore gave an interview to
Newsweek on Friday, and when
asked his thoughts on
President Donald’s Trump’s
promise of “fire and fury”
on North Korea, he gave a
shocking response.
Though Gore called the
warning to North
Korea “intemperate” and
“really unwise,” he did
absolve the commander in
chief of any wrongdoing in
exacerbating tensions
between
Washington and Pyongyang.
China's
President Xi Jinping said
there needs to be a peaceful
resolution to the North
Korean nuclear issue, and in
a telephone call with U.S.
President Donald Trump he
urged all sides to avoid
words or action that raise
tensions.
Xi's
comments came hours after
Trump warned North Korea
that the U.S. military was
"locked and loaded" as
Pyongyang accused the U.S.
leader of driving the Korean
peninsula to the brink of
nuclear war.
The lawmakers’ vote comes
amid growing anger in Iran
over U.S. President Donald
Trump’s threats to
renegotiate the nuclear deal
struck with world powers in
2015. While they stressed
the bill wouldn’t violate
the terms of that agreement,
it again increases the
friction between the two
nations that routinely have
tense encounters in the
Persian Gulf.
In a session Sunday, 240
lawmakers voted for the
bill, with only one
abstention from the 247
legislators on hand, Iran’s
state-run news agency IRNA
reported.
Any medical procedure,
whether it be liposuction,
gastric bypass or stomach
stapling, are only
short-term solutions for a
condition that will exist
for the rest of one’s life.
If you undergo any of these
procedures but don’t change
your diet or activities,
then eventually you’ll be
right back where you were.
The best thing to do is
to change your diet and
start exercising on a daily
basis. This also needs to
become a way of life from
now on, like or not.
“It does meet the definition
of domestic terrorism in our
statute,” Sessions said on
ABC’s “Good Morning
America.” Liberals have
insinuated that the Trump
Administration wouldn't
flinch over this incident,
but it's clear that they are
taking action.
Opponents of the
Keystone XL pipeline vowed
on Thursday to block
construction of the
controversial project if
Nebraska regulators approve
the proposed route later
this year.
The state’s
regulators wrapped up a
final public hearing a day
early on Thursday on
TransCanada Corp’s
proposed Keystone XL pipeline
after four days of
contentious exchanges
between lawyers. Nebraska’s
Public Service Commission
will make its final decision
by Nov. 23.
I have already made known
my feelings about the white
supremacists who gathered in
Charlottesville.
Their idiocy is
overshadowed only by their
moral depravity...I have
said for years that Leftists
ought to be able to express
their disapproval of a
police shooting without
burning down a convenience
store
If you want to be the good
guy, you need to be better.
If you have no desire to be
better, then you are just as
rotten as whatever evil or
perceived evil you purport
to oppose.
The findings—led by
researchers at the
University of
Michigan—support the
generally accepted
understanding that lead
leached into the system
because that water wasn't
treated to prevent
corrosion. While previous
studies had pointed to this
mechanism, this is the first
direct evidence. It
contradicts a regulator's
claim earlier this year that
corrosion control chemicals
would not have prevented the
water crisis.
Fox News analyst Judge
Napolitano said Thursday the
FBI raid on Paul Manafort’s
home was “much more
aggressive” than tactics
used in the Hillary Clinton
investigation.
“This is so much more
aggressive than the
investigation of Mrs.
[Clinton],” Napolitano said
on “Fox and Friends.” “The
investigation of Mrs.
Clinton didn’t even use a
grand Jury.”
New
generation nuclear power
stations that produce cheap
electricity and less waste
always seem about to appear,
but so far they have not
materialised.
North Korea spurned harsh
new U.N. sanctions Monday
and threatened to defend
itself with nuclear weapons
if necessary, as Secretary
of State Rex Tillerson
repeated an offer to bargain
with the outcast nation
under the right
circumstances.
There was no sign at a
major Asian security
conference here that the
sanctions hailed by
President Trump as a
foreign policy achievement
would succeed where past
efforts have failed in
trying to persuade the
country to give up its
nuclear weapons.
Something wondrous is
happening inside your head.
The reason you’re able to
see and understand and
remember these words is
because neurotransmitters in
your brain are facilitating
the billions of individual
neural impulses necessary to
make it possible. On a slow
day, your brain makes the
busiest beehive look as
though it were frozen in
ice. Nothing in the world
compares with your brain for
seething, but exquisitely
organized, activity at the
molecular level—or at any
level. If it weren’t stashed
inside your head, it would
belong on a pedestal in the
Smithsonian Museum!
Solar activity is expected
to be very low with a chance
for a C-class flares on days
one, two, and three (15 Aug,
16 Aug, 17 Aug). The
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet
levels on day one (15 Aug),
quiet to active levels on
day two (16 Aug) and
unsettled to minor storm
levels on day three (17
Aug).
Earlier this week, the
Trump Department of Justice
told the mayor of Chicago
that it would cease funding
grants to the Chicago Police
Department that had been
approved in the Obama
administration because
Chicago city officials were
not cooperating with federal
immigration officials.
The DOJ contended that
Chicago officials were
contributing to lawlessness
by refusing to inform the
feds of the whereabouts of
undocumented foreign-born
people, thereby creating
what the feds derisively
call a “sanctuary city,” and
Chicago officials have
argued that their police
officers and clerical folks
are not obligated to work
for the feds.
In the past several
weeks, tensions have
escalated between North
Korea and the United States.
North Korea continues to
ignore requests by several
nations to cease the
development and testing of
nuclear missiles.
Instead, Kim Jong-un has
been flexing his nuclear
muscles–staging parades,
running missile launch
tests, threatening the
United States. Anything and
everything to make the
majority of the world
incredibly uncomfortable.
It seems a 21st-century
Cold War is inevitable and
now it appears we have
satellite images to prove
it.
Asteroid 2012 TC4 hasn't
been seen since its last
brush with our planet five
years ago, but calculations
of its trajectory told
astronomers that it would
return in October 2017.
Right on cue, the
building-sized rock has now
emerged from the darkness of
space as it hurtles towards
the Earth. NASA and the ESA
plan to use it as a test run
for the international
Planetary Defense network,
and have now been able to
calculate its trajectory.
Bastardi’s study shows that
while global temperatures
were anomalously warm when
Gore won the Nobel Peace
Prize, they are less warm
now and they were even less
warm in the years between
today and when Gore won the
peace prize.
As global warming due
to human-induced climate
change melts glaciers at
increasing rates, Swiss
police are warning that
many more bodies similar
to those found recently
will be uncovered by
retreating ice.
The frozen mummified
bodies of a mountaineer
couple who vanished some
75 years ago while
hiking in the Swiss Alps
are only the harbinger
of an expected grisly
harvest, as melting ice
throughout the legendary
mountain chain reveals
more and more human
remains, according
to local law enforcement
in the alpine country.
Modak was Suniva’s Chief
Financial Officer for eight
years, serving until 2016.
He then joined SQN Capital
Management where he serves
as its CFO. Given his
previous position at Suniva,
he probably negotiated the
original $50 million loan by
SQN. Now he’s try to recover
that money for his new
employer. I’d be shocked if
he isn’t the prime mover
behind the 201 filing.
Last Monday, a shoplifter in
Toronto was caught stealing
an outfit for a job
interview. But when
Constable Niran Jeyanesan
arrived to arrest him, he
was moved by the
18-year-old's story and
decided to buy him the
clothes instead.
Now the officer has
revealed that the young man
got the job, and will begin
work next week.
In an effort to better
align solar-energy
production with peak demand,
the electric utility in
Columbia, Missouri, has
begun to pay higher rebates
for new west-facing arrays
than it will for those
facing south.
The city-owned utility
adjusted its rebates as of
Aug. 1 in order to encourage
more solar production in
late afternoon, when
electricity use tends to
peak, especially during the
high-demand summer months.
Standing Rock Sioux and
Northern Cheyenne want to
stop Dakota Access oil flow
The Standing Rock Sioux and
Cheyenne River Sioux tribes,
have requested that the
Dakota Access Pipeline
(DAPL) be shut down while a
U.S. District Court Judge
decides whether to mandate
further environmental
review.
After a weekend of violence
in Charlottesville,
President Trump held a brief
press conference to denounce
neo-Nazis, the KKK, and
white supremacists who
instigated protests.
President Donald Trump’s
approval rating jumped to 45
percent in the days
following the president
suggesting U.S. military
action against North Korea,
a poll released Friday
shows.
Trump’s
approval rating increased
from 39 percent last week...
Trump has ordered a review
of Chinese trade practices
that force foreign firms to
partner with Chinese firms.
This comes shortly after he
praised Beijing for its
support of harsher UN
sanctions on North Korea.
If the drinking water
industry is anything, it’s
consistent...
In recent years, their
concerns and outlook have
remained largely the same,
typically forecasting better
days ahead. That hopeful
attitude is natural, as
scientific studies have
shown that we humans have an
ingrained “optimism bias.”
So it is slightly
concerning that in 2017,
SOTWI respondents bucked the
trend — and even their human
predisposition — by viewing
the water industry as
pessimistically as ever.
On September 11, 2001, we
were deeply moved by the
deaths of 2,996 people and
the wounding of another
6,000.
In reaction to that
shocking day, we launched a
series of wars which have
gone on for nearly 16 years,
have cost more than $5
trillion, and have left more
than 4,000 Americans dead
and more than 50,000
severely wounded.
That has been the cost of
an attack by 19 terrorists
using commercial airliners
as weapons.
Now consider the human
cost of losing one American
city to a nuclear strike.
Areas around the
Yellowstone
Supervolcano, the
largest underground
reservoir of magma in
the United States,
registered a swarm of
230 earthquakes within a
week, potentially
indicating a violent
eruption.
While pointing to an
underground movement
of magma, or a simple
tectonic fault slip, the
earthquakes, although
numerous, are not being
treated by experts as an
immediate threat.
The fact that a bakery would
not bake a Trump cake while
controversy continues to
surround Christian bakeries
refusing to bake cakes for
gay weddings was not lost
on CEO and general counsel
of the Alliance Defending
Freedom, Michael P. Farris.
The Rev. Noe Carias
shuffles into the
cramped room, his face
immediately pleasant
upon seeing strangers.
He's well practiced in
his pastoral craft of
comforting parishioners.
But the pastor isn't in
ministerial clothes. He
sits down, wearing a
blue prison uniform.
Carias' name is printed
on a plastic band
attached to his left
wrist. The Immigration
and Customs Enforcement
officer tells Carias he
has 20 minutes before he
needs to return to
detention.
"Newly released Justice
Department emails show that
[Paige] Herwig, whose title
was counselor to the
attorney general at the
time, helped edit the first
media statement responding
to inquiries about the
tarmac meeting," Susan
Crabtree wrote for the Free
Beacon.
Huffington Post reporter
Yashar Ali revealed on his
official Twitter account
Wednesday that Fox News’
Eric Bolling was slapping
him with an enormous
lawsuit. Bolling is alleging
that Ali defamed him with a
story accusing him of
sending lewd texts, and he
is seeking millions in
damages.
“Just received a
summons,” tweeted Ali. “Eric
Bolling is suing me for
defamation – $50 million in
damages. I stand by my
reporting [and] will protect
my sources.”
With search warrant in
hand, the FBI showed up
before dawn at the Virginia
home of President Donald
Trump's former campaign
chairman and seized
documents and other
materials, the Post
reported.
The FBI was working at
the behest of special
counsel Robert Mueller,
investigating Trump's
campaign for possible
collusion with Russia, the
Post reported.
Intervening 10
years ago to contain the
damage from the banking
system's excessive
risk-taking in
mortgage-backed securities,
the European Central Bank
initiated what has proven to
be an exceptional and
prolonged involvement in
markets by central banks.
Much has changed
since then, yet too much
remains the same.
The risk of
unsettling financial
instability, while lower,
has morphed and migrated but
has not disappeared.
A Google engineer who wrote
a memo detailing the alleged
left-wing bias of the
company and their
intolerance of certain
viewpoints has been fired
for expressing certain
viewpoints.
Former Google engineer James
Damore is suddenly between
jobs. He’s been fired,
Bloomberg reports, for
writing “an internal memo
blasting the web company’s
diversity policies.” Google
has long cultivated a
reputation for hiring smart
people, turning them loose,
and listening to them. This
firing puts a giant dent in
that reputation.
Federal authorities arrested
six persons last week
involved in an apparent
scheme to produce false
identification documents
through the Massachusetts
Registry of Motor Vehicles
(RMV), some of which were
then used as ID to illegally
vote in Boston, reported
Judicial Watch.
A lot of press has been
written lately related to
California’s aggressive new
policy to promote a 100
percent Renewable Portfolio
Standard (RPS) by 2045. This
issue has become much more
relevant in light of
President Trump’s recent
decision to pull out of the
Paris Climate agreement.
Essentially, states are
looking to supplant the
federal government in the
area of addressing global
climate change.
Government secrecy is
running rampant in an age
where more and more people
are demanding transparency.
Did you know that the U.S.
Government classifies over
500 million pages of
documents each year?
Justification for the mass
classification of
information is (apparently)
done for the sake of
“national security,” but as
we know:...
Based on the agreement, the
three parties would make
joint investment in the
development of oil and gas
fields both in Iran and
overseas according to
proposals put forward by any
of the parties.
First of all, I believe
science and spirituality are
two sides of the same coin,
each informing and shaping
the other. While there may
be a higher power or deep,
inner wisdom that answers
the call of the desires we
wish to manifest, our brains
also play an important part
in the equation.
Neural networks—clusters of
neurons in the brain—grow
stronger and larger each
time we repeat thoughts and
behaviors. Eventually, after
they’re activated frequently
enough, neural networks
clump together to form
neural pathways, like
favorite highways our brains
prefer because they are
well-worn and familiar.
Our repeated
thoughts eventually
shape the way we see and
experience the world, and
thus inform our actions and reactions.
Our minds become
pre-disposed to return to
repeated thought patterns
which activate the neural
pathways our brains have
become accustomed to. In
fact, we unknowingly seek
out evidence to confirm
those thought patterns
because our neural pathways
are always hard at work.
The smoke is from wildfires,
an increasingly common
occurrence at this time of
year. It can’t be welcome
news to those who’ve planned
trips to that area for the
August 21 total solar
eclipse.
Is loneliness a
silent killer? Things like
obesity and smoking are well
established and clear
contributors to the risk of
premature mortality, but
according to a new study,
the impacts of chronic
social isolation may pose a
similar threat.
A string of
studies over the years have
explored the negative health
effects of ongoing
loneliness. These have
linked social isolation to
diminished sleep quality,
inflammation and increased
morbidity. A 2010 paper
found that its influence on
the risk of early death to
be comparable to smoking and
alcohol consumption.
An interdisciplinary team of
researchers funded by the
National Science Foundation
(NSF) has concluded that
bacteria in a lake 800
meters (2,600 feet) beneath
the West Antarctic Ice Sheet
may digest methane, a
powerful greenhouse gas,
preventing its release into
the atmosphere.
“Right now, billions of
neurons in your brain are
working together to generate
a conscious experience — and
not just any conscious
experience, your experience
of the world around you and
of yourself within it. How
does this happen? According
to neuroscientist Anil Seth,
we’re all hallucinating all
the time; when we agree
about our hallucinations, we
call it ‘reality.’ ”
Research from a team in
Paris has found that new
auditory memories can be
formed while we sleep, as
long as they are delivered
during the right sleep
phase. The idea we can form
new memories while we
slumber has been a topic of
great debate among
scientists in recent years
and this new study
demonstrates that the brain
can indeed learn new
information in a sleeping
state.
Technologies developed to
grow without soil and
nutrients might not only
help with future space
missions, but could also
prove pivotal in feeding the
developing world. For design
student Nikian Aghababaie,
this is exactly where he
drew inspiration from for a
low-cost approach to growing
vegetables without soil and
using minimal water,
something he hopes can ease
world hunger and generate
income for rural
communities.
Batteries powered by
bacteria could prove highly
useful in offering spurts of
electricity where it isn't
readily available, maybe
running low-energy
diagnostic devices in the
developing world, for
example. Seokheun Choi, a
Computer Science Assistant
at Binghamton University,
has been investigating these
possibilities over the last
five years, developing
origami-style and
ninja-star-like paper
batteries that are powered
by dirty water. His latest
breakthrough battery design
calls only on bodily fluids,
and was able to power an LED
light using a single drop of
spit.
The medical/pharmaceutical
industry is worth trillions
of dollars, and
unfortunately, human greed
and ego have overtaken what
should come first: our
health and well-being. We
are, undeniably, living in
an age where big
corporations and financial
institutions hold more power
than our own governments, a
fact made clear through the
revolving door positions
that swap between them and
government regulatory
agencies like the FDA, and
corporations like Monsanto.
Why do some people believe
in certain things even when
faced with an overwhelming
volume of evidence
indicating they are wrong?
In a world labeled as
"post-truth", where facts
and scientific evidence have
become subjective, some
researchers are
investigating how false
beliefs are not only formed,
but seemingly strengthened,
when presented with
contradictory evidence.
...Mayor Emanuel is
defending Chicago’s
so-called sanctuary status,
claiming that these
requirements, “sow fear in
local immigrant communities
and ultimately make the
people of Chicago less
safe.”
Really? Chicago – where
4,331 people were shot and
762 were killed last year –
will be less safe? Who
exactly does the Mayor think
will be made safer if local
police let criminal
noncitizens back on the
streets instead of
cooperating with federal
authorities to deport them?
The article, titled,
“Hillary’s Plea Bargain,”
was penned by Ed Klein,
former New York Times
Magazine editor-in-chief,
and claimed that not only
had the Clinton email
investigation been reopened,
but that Clinton was offered
a plea bargain if she will
admit that she “committed a
prosecutable crime.”
Solar activity is expected
to be very low on days one,
two, and three (11 Aug, 12
Aug, 13 Aug). The
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet to
unsettled levels on day one
(11 Aug) and quiet to active
levels on days two and three
(12 Aug, 13 Aug).
LISA ANN CATANO shares some
of the research findings in
epigenetics that show us
that our genes are affected
by our beliefs and thinking
more than we realize. Dr.
Bruce Lipton, a cellular
biologist who was at the
University of Wisconsin
cloning human muscle cells,
is best known for
challenging the existing
belief that the human body
is controlled by genes. In
his video The Biology of
Perception, he demonstrates
to the audience that
perception affects biology.
The flight on the Russian
Air Force Tupolev Tu-154 was
made as part of the Open
Skies Treaty, a longstanding
pact signed by 34 nations
that allows participants to
fly over any part of any
territory of other
participants to make sure
everyone is adhering to
treaties limiting the
numbers and types of
weapons.
U.S. Air Force
personnel were on the
plane, which flew at low
altitude around 3,700
feet.
If you told somebody 10
years ago that there existed
some sort of secret group or
“secret government” pulling
the strings behind the
scenes of government policy,
international law, various
global rules/regulations,
and more, they would have
called you a “conspiracy
theorist.” Today things have
changed, largely as a result
of information leaked by
Edward Snowden, Julian
Assange, and various other
whistleblowers and activists
in recent years.
As the U.S. growing season
entered its peak this
summer, farmers began
posting startling pictures
on social media: fields of
beans, peach orchards and
vegetable gardens withering
away.
Section 201 of the 1974
Trade Act is the United
States’ “global safeguard”
law. It allows for temporary
relief in situations where
surging imports are causing
“serious injury” to a U.S.
industry. An industry
representative may petition
the U.S. International Trade
Commission (ITC or
Commission) to conduct an
investigation into whether
imports are causing such
injury and recommend
remedies.
On June 30, a federal
appeals court upheld a lower
court ruling that severs the
Penobscot Indian Nation from
the waters of the Penobscot
River, a ruling that
Penobscot Indian Nation
Chief Kirk Francis says is
reminiscent of federal
termination policy—or worse.
“The river and our
relationship to it and the
200 islands [that form the
reservation] are the core of
our cultural identity. If
our ability to protect the
river is taken away, we lose
a big part of who we are,”
Francis told ICMN.
Fifteen of the 20 CEOs
running the biggest IOUs got
substantial pay increases in
2016, according to an
analysis of federal filings
by POWERGRID
International and
Electric Light & Power
Executive Digest. Some got
nearly 100 percent hikes in
total compensation, while
only a few came out even or
less paid than in 2015.
The Environmental Protection
Agency’s mission statement
reads: “to protect human
health and the
environment.” Ironically,
while the EPA has done some
strong work in the past, the
agency has also helped
corporations destroy the
environment and threaten
human health through
pesticide usage and adding
neurotoxins to our drinking
water. These are only two of
many examples of the EPA
doing an inadequate job of
protecting human health and
the environment.
Although it's usually used
as a compliment, having a
big heart can be a good
thing or a bad thing. When
it needs to pump more blood,
the heart can grow in a good
way in response to exercise
and pregnancy, but after a
heart attack, swelling of
the heart muscles can lead
to further complications.
Now, Canadian scientists
have found that a protein
called cardiotrophin 1 (CT1)
can essentially trick the
heart into the good kind of
growth, and reduce the bad
kind.
The solar industry has
been on a tear the last few
years.
In 2016, solar
represented 39% of all new
installed power generation
in the US, more than coal,
natural gas or nuclear.
Solar is creating jobs, too.
From 93,000 jobs in 2004,
solar has grown to over
260,000 jobs in 2016. Much
of this has been driven by
the incredible improvements
in efficiency and cost of
solar technology. In fact,
solar power is now cost
competitive with coal and
natural gas in many places
in the US...
According to Reuters, the
maneuver by the USS John S.
McCain was the third in a
“freedom of navigation
operation” or “fonop.” The
operations, according to
anonymous officials,
were meant to challenge
China’s claim on trade
routes currently contested
by Brunei, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Taiwan, and
Vietnam.
United States
intelligence officials
believe North Korea has mini
nuclear warheads that can be
delivered via its
intercontinental ballistic
missiles.
The Washington
Post reports on the
ominous assessment by the
Defense Intelligence Agency.
"The IC [intelligence
community] assesses North
Korea has produced nuclear
weapons for ballistic
missile delivery, to include
delivery by ICBM-class
missiles," the document
reads.
Sea-surface temperatures
across the Equatorial
Pacific Ocean have not
changed much during the past
month and remain near to
slightly warmer than average
across most parts.
Crime shouldn’t pay, but
that hasn’t been the case
with illegal aliens in the
United States. But thanks to
a crackdown by the Trump
administration, arrests and
deportations are
skyrocketing.
Lt. Colonel Tony Schaffer
told Fox News that Schultz
ordered the Awan Brothers to
scare off the lawyers due to
the threat they pose in
exposing widespread election
fraud committed by the
Democratic Party in 2016.
Hot and dry, the interior
of British Columbia is
ablaze with wildfires that
have driven tens of
thousands of residents from
their homes and filled the
skies over the province with
smoke.
There are 125 wildfires
burning across the province,
and Chief fire information
officer Kevin Skrepnek said
officials are anticipating
thunderstorms with lightning
and little rain. With no
relief in sight in the
weather forecast, B.C.’s
wildfire emergency is
expected to continue over
the next few weeks.
The first phase of
construction will be
completed by Nov. 1, 2017,
DWR says, with the objective
of ensuring the main
spillway can safely pass
Feather River watershed
flows this year.
Why do so many humans equate
relaxation and pleasure with
walking barefoot along the
beach as the waves roll in?
How come my son River’s
first instinct is to take
his shoes off when he sees a
field of green grass?
Is it kooky human behavior
that is simply hard-wired
into our genetic makeup, or
is there something more to
this urge to remove
footwear?
"You can't issue
subpoenas without a grand
jury," he said. "It's the
grand jury that actually
issues the subpoenas. And so
I think Bob Mueller wanted a
grand jury focused on this
so he could issue subpoenas
and then review the
evidence. That's a typical
thing to be done in any
investigation."
Christie praised Mueller
as a prosecutor, but said
he also needs to be a
"careful" one.
Compost is organic material
that can be added to soil to
help plants grow. Food
scraps and yard waste
currently make up 20 to 30
percent of what we throw
away, and should be
composted instead. Making
compost keeps these
materials out of landfills
where they take up space and
release methane, a potent
greenhouse gas.
Earlier this year, Sen. John
Cornyn, R-Texas, and Rep.
Richard Hudson, R-N.C.,
introduced the
Constitutional Concealed
Carry Reciprocity Act of
2017, which would allow
individuals with
concealed-carry privileges
in their state of residence
to exercise those rights in
any other state while
abiding by that state’s
laws.
The rule sets standards for
the oil and natural gas
drilling industry that aim
to reduce emissions of
methane, a potent greenhouse
gas and the main component
of natural gas.
Costly cyber attacks are
having a bigger impact on
corporate earnings and are
becoming a fact of life for
companies as Oreo cookie
maker Mondelez, drug maker
Merck and others said that a
destructive "worm" attack in
the last week of the second
quarter disrupted
operations.
“There’s a lot of
Democrats that are disturbed
by this because it threatens
our national security. Are
you disturbed by it?” asked
“View” co-host Paula Faris.
“No, not at all,” Waters
said. “I am so glad they’re
telling us what’s going on.”
Although peak oil is a
prophecy that has yet to
come true, the fate
apparently has fallen on
U.S. residential electricity
sales, which are declining
after a nearly century-long
rise, according to a new
report from the Energy
Information Administration.
Overall, household
electricity use has receded
about 9 percent since its
heyday, according to the
EIA.
Social media goliath
Facebook shut down an
experiment with artificial
intelligence, after two AI
programs created and began
to speak a language only
they knew, the Independent
reported Tuesday.
Gun suppressors have been
heavily regulated since the
Great Depression. They
reduce the sound of a
gunshot to levels that
aren’t as damaging to a
shooter’s hearing. That’s
why U.S. Rep. Steve King,
R-Iowa, has introduced a
bill that would deregulate
them. There is also a
companion bill in the Senate
sponsored by Sen. Mike Lee,
R-Utah.
The first signs of a
sturdier physical oil market
are beginning to emerge as
evidenced by the healthier
state of light sweet crudes
in the Atlantic Basin,
buoyed by robust demand from
global refiners supported by
healthy margins and refined
product cracks.
Former Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s
own words were the linchpin
in the case against him, his
quotes cited more than 20
times in a federal judge's
ruling that found him guilty
of criminal contempt of
court.
In a verdict filed Monday
morning, U.S. District Judge
Susan Bolton said evidence
demonstrated Arpaio’s
“flagrant disregard” for
another federal judge’s
order that halted his
signature immigration
round-ups.
The
sentencing phase will begin
Oct. 5. Arpaio, 85, faces up
to six months in
confinement, a sentence
equivalent to that of a
misdemeanor
The forward osmosis (FO)
market has changed in the
last two years. Back in
2015, when BlueTech last
published a report on FO,
there was a lot of research
activity and some hype
around the technology, but
at that stage there had been
very little in the way of
commercialisation.
Newly released documents
from long-secret Kennedy
assassination files raise
startling questions about
what top agency officials
knew and when they knew it.
The People—the Nnee (known
today as Western
Apache)—need to follow the
lead of their great
ancestors and fight for
life...
We have a future if you
believe in it. We must do
work in the Earth-Is-Woman
to help repair and continue
the good work of our
ancestors which the Creator,
Bik’ehgo’ihi’nan, gave us in
the beginning. So, whomever
you are in our Nnee
communities, whether it’s in
Mexico, Texas, New Mexico,
Arizona, or wherever you are
found, it is time to get
ready and start praying it
up with the heart and not
with money or whatever else
that comes between yourself
and Bik’ehgo’ihi’nan alone.
erhaps the most interesting
revelation by Parks
Associates research is that
many consumers have dropped
pay TV completely and opted
for over the air (OTA) TV.
The percentage of U.S.
households that use
antenna-only TV has grown
from about 9% in 2013 to 15%
today...
In an unprecedented way,
the decree-law proposed by
the Minister of Health has
been signed by the sitting
Italian president Sergio
Mattarella. Only four
vaccines were mandatory in
Italy, now that number
triples to 12.
No other decree-law has
moved so fast in the Italian
legislative system, the
reasons of such hurry are
incomprehensible considering
that the Istituto Superiore
Di Sanità (the local version
of the CDC) has declared
that contrary to what stated
in the decree itself there
is no objective urgency.
There are no epidemics,
the number of cases of
measles or meningitis in the
current year have been
substantially lower than the
previous year.
Now that John Kelly has
taken over as White House
chief of staff, the former
commanding general wants to
put a halt to President
Donald Trump’s tweeting
sprees that have left aides
scrambling.
According to officials in
the West Wing, Kelly wants
to change the White House’s
organizational structure. He
wants to limit who has
access to the president,
what ends up on his desk and
who briefs him, POLITICO
reported.
Attorney General Jeff
Sessions announced Thursday
that federal prosecutors
have charged more than 400
people in taking part in
medical fraud and opioid
scams that totaled $1.3
billion in fraudulent
billing.
James “Ooker” Eskridge is
the mayor of a town on an
island disappearing in the
Chesapeake Bay, but rather
than see it as evidence of
global warming, he used it
to shut down Al Gore’s
narrative that the seas are
rising because of climate
change.
Eskridge faced the
climate warming alarmist
during a CNN town hall on
global warming...
“Our island is
disappearing,” he explained,
“but it’s because of erosion
and not because of sea level
rising, unless we get a
seawall, we will lose our
island.”
Scientists have developed
magnetic microbots with
silver nanoparticles that
can zoom around contaminated
water and clean up
disease-causing bacteria.
Drinking water contaminated
with pathogenic bacteria can
cause serious illnesses
that, in areas with spotty
medical services, are
potentially life-threatening
without proper treatment.
Nearly one dozen
California counties had more
registered voters on their
voter rolls than people
eligible to vote living in
their county, a new Judicial
Watch letter has revealed.
The conservative watchdog
group sent a letter to
California Secretary of
State Alex Padilla on August
1 on behalf of the Election
Integrity Project of
California. The letter
threatened to sue the Golden
State if they refuse to
comply with the National
Voter Registration Act,
which mandates voting
precincts maintain the
integrity of their voter
rolls by taking steps to
maintain their accuracy.
“The day science begins
to study non-physical
phenomena, it will make more
progress in one decade than
in all the previous
centuries of its existence.”
– Nikola Tesla
A group of internationally
recognized scientists have
come together to stress the
importance of what is still
commonly overlooked in the
mainstream scientific
community – the fact that
matter (protons, electrons,
photons, anything that has a
mass) is not the only
reality. We wish
to understand the nature of
our reality, but how can we
do so if we are continually
examining only physical
systems? What about the role
of non-physical systems,
such as consciousness,
or their interaction with
physical systems (matter)?
Public pension
fund investments returned
only 0.6 percent on average
in fiscal year 2016,
according to a report by the
Center for Retirement
Research at Boston College,
far lower than their 7.6
percent average target rate.
Lower than
expected returns did little
to improve the nation’s
growing unfunded pension
liabilities. Of the 170
plans studied, the average
funding ratio was 72 percent
for the fiscal year, about
the same level as the year
before...
An Australian-based research
team has made a breakthrough
in synthesising a novel
photocatalytic titanium
dioxide (TiO2) material
capable of rapid and
effective disinfection of
water using natural
sunlight.
Solar activity is expected
to be very low with a slight
chance for a C-class flare
on days one and two (08 Aug,
09 Aug) and expected to be
very low on day three (10
Aug). The geomagnetic
field is expected to be at
quiet to unsettled levels on
day one (08 Aug) and quiet
levels on days two and three
(09 Aug, 10 Aug).
Long before modern science
came along, Indigenous
Peoples were reading the
skies, ocean, marine life
and tides, processing that
data without technology.
After contact, Euro-centric
methods supplanted the
ancient ways of gathering
and testing information. But
in recent decades, the power
of indigenous knowledge has
cropped up again and again,
as science finds itself
coming to many of the same
conclusions in the lab that
Indigenous Peoples had done
over millennia.
“What people want is a
vibrant economy. They don't
care if Bill Gates gets
richer. They want to know is
'Is my paycheck going up?'
'Are my prospects
improving?'” said Forbes...
“So that's why they've got
to do a big tax cut and what
they should do, since
they've been so dilatory on
this, make it retroactive to
July 1st or Jan 1st so
people get a big refund in
April. They see it in the
next pay check," said the
chairman and editor-in-chief
of Forbes Media. "That will
put people in a mood. Bill
Clinton learned a vibrant
economy covers a multitude
of sins,” said Forbes, a
Republican candidate in the
1996 and 2000 Presidential
primaries.
Eureka! After decades of
puzzling about whether the
sun’s core spins faster than
its surface, astronomers can
now measure it.
Our star, the sun, isn’t a
solid body but instead a
huge, shining ball of gas.
Astronomers have long known
it doesn’t rotate, or spin,
as a single rigid mass.
They’ve known, for example,
that gases in the sun’s
outer layers move around at
different speeds depending
on their latitude, with the
equator spinning faster than
the higher latitudes. The
rotation of the sun’s outer
layers varies from 25 days
at the equator to 35 days at
the poles. But what of the
sun’s core? For decades,
scientists have suspected
the core moves faster than
the surface, but, until now,
no measurement was possible.
While many have long
suspected that such a link
exists and studies with mice
have supported this, Swiss
scientists discovered last
September that exposure to
deodorants containing these
salts triggers tumor growth.
Most deodorants on the
market contain aluminum
salts, which are highly
effective in getting rid of
body odor and sweat.
SMU eventually walked back
its language about the
display potentially being
triggering and harmful,
after students expressed
concern that the new policy
would restrict free speech.
Talking at the DEF CON
convention in Las Vegas, the
Tor Project co-founder Roger
Dingledine said that the
dark web doesn’t exist and
it’s just a few web pages.
He added that media has
wrongly labeled it as a
heaven for illegal
activities. Also, only 3% of
Tor users connect to a
hidden .onion website.
The Trump administration
is working to peel back an
Obama-era fracking
regulation designed to
protect water quality.
On July 24, the Bureau of
Land Management (BLM), part
of the Interior Department,
“submitted a reversal to
eliminate a policy that
required companies to
disclose the chemicals used
for fracking on public and
tribal lands. The disclosure
is a precaution against
polluting water sources,”...
The service is reportedly
getting a good deal on the
jets, which list for around
$390 million and are now
sitting in the Mojave
Desert.
President
Donald Trump said the
projected cost
of new Air Force One
aircraft was too high,
so the
U.S.
Air Force found a way to
lower it: by buying a
pair of Boeing 747
jetliners abandoned by a
bankrupt
Russian airline.
A security researcher who in
May stopped an outbreak of
the WannaCry ransomware has
been arrested and detained
after attending the Def Con
conference in Las Vegas...
The Justice Department has
been after those involved
with the notorious Kronos
malware for more than two
years. The indictment
accuses another unnamed
defendant in the case of
advertising and selling the
malware on the now-defunct
dark web marketplace
AlphaBay. Its founder and
operator, Alexandre Cazes,
was found dead last month.
At first sight, the landing
and takeoff of the Super
Hornet on the Ford looked as
conventional as any other
touchdown and launch, but
the superficial similarity
hid technology that had
never been used at sea
before. For over 60 years,
aircraft carriers around the
world have launched
fixed-wing aircraft using
steam catapults, wherein a
head of live steam blasted a
piston down a slot in the
flight deck that dragged the
airplane along and hurled it
into the air.
The unarmed Minuteman III
missile was launched at 2:10
a.m. PT from Vandenberg Air
Force Base, about 130 miles
northwest of Los Angeles.
An Air Force statement
said that the test was not a
response to recent North
Korean actions, but shows
that America's nuclear
enterprise is "safe, secure,
effective and ready to be
able to deter, detect and
defend against attacks on
the United States and its
allies."
The initial focus of the
study was clear: to
determine whether renewable
energy policies or
regulations have accelerated
the retirement of coal and
nuclear plants. Perry
himself admitted the
so-called study was intended
to reassess “politically
driven policies driven by a
hostility to coal,” implying
he intends to use the study
to discriminate against
renewables in favor of
dirty, expensive coal.
On Tuesday Senator Corey
Booker introduced a bill
seeking to drop marijuana
from America’s list of
controlled substances,
making pot legal across the
U.S.
Federal law right now
considers weed as dangerous
as heroin and more dangerous
than cocaine. The proposal
rides a wave of recreational
legalization across America,
but there’s another impact
to Booker’s bill: it would
free thousands of state and
federal inmates incarcerated
for possession and
trafficking
To replace a bulb today
requires that you buy a
compact fluorescent (CFL) or
an LED of equivalent
brightness. They cost more,
but last longer and use much
less energy. So it is a
positive thing overall. What
makes things so difficult is
that there are so many
replacement choices. And
instead of just a wattage
rating, you need to pay
attention to the lumens
(brightness) rating and
color specification.
A scientific study released
Monday said that the Earth's
atmosphere will warm by at
least another 2 degrees C
(3.8 degrees F) — regardless
of what we do in the future
to limit greenhouse gas
emissions.
There's
only a 5% chance that Earth
will warm 2 degrees or less
by the end of this century,
the study said. It shows a
mere 1% chance that warming
could be at or below 1.5
degrees, which was the
target set by the landmark
2016 Paris Agreement.
Renewable energy is taking
off in some parts of the
world, but it's far from
replacing fossil fuels. And
speaking of fossil fuels,
the Industry Focus: Energy
team checks in with OPEC,
and some infrastructure and
service players as well.
A massive open-pit copper
mine might not be the first
thing that comes to mind
when thinking about
solar power.
But the construction of
photovoltaic panels actually
requires a wide range of
metals and minerals to
build. Nineteen, to be
exact, including silica,
indium, silver, selenium and
lead. Most can be found or
produced in Canada.
Health Care:
Now they tell us. After
spending months pumping out
stories about how great
ObamaCare is, the news media
are now admitting that, lo
and behold, ObamaCare is
unsustainable. What's
changed?
Delisting the Yellowstone
grizzly bear ‘absurd,’ say
Northern Cheyenne, who plan
to sue...
“It is absurd to describe
the grizzly bear as
recovered when it is absent
from 98 percent of its
historic range,” said Conrad
Fisher, Vice-President of
the Northern Cheyenne Tribe,
in a statement. “Grizzly
bears used to roam freely on
the Northern Cheyenne
Reservation, but nobody has
seen a grizzly on the
Reservation for several
generations.”
August 1, 2017
[Editor: Next Friday
edition will not happen.
I am visiting mother earth's
forest for recouperation.
I plan on being back on duty
for Tuesday's edition.]
Asteroid 2012 TC4 might give
Earth a close shave, or pass
more distantly, in October,
2017. Scientists are trying
to reacquire the asteroid
this summer – find it again
in space – to determine its
precise orbit.
Electric power has worked
its way into sedans,
supercars, motorcycles and
most things in between, but
we're yet to see a true
off-roader powered by a
battery. Charge stations are
hard to come by in cities,
let alone deserted
campsites. Undeterred by
this fact, Bollinger Motors
has unveiled its
battery-powered truck for
adventurous
environmentalists.
In 2014 the voters of
California went to the polls
and approved a proposition
that would ease the
overpopulation in jails and
prisons by loosening law
enforcement standards on
crime. They were told this
would have little effect on
crime itself. That’s not
what happened.
China's
central bank will continue
to force financial
institutions to cut debt but
ensure the process is smooth
and orderly to limit its
impact on market liquidity,
an assistant central bank
governor said in remarks
published on Monday.
Higher
short-term funding costs,
driven by a regulatory
crackdown on banks' riskier
financing, have started to
spill over into the real
economy, a risk to economic
stability ahead of a
five-yearly leadership
transition later this year.
Demand for gold
bars in China, the world’s
biggest bullion market,
soared by more than half in
the first six months of the
year as investors sought a
haven from financial and
geopolitical risks.
Sales climbed 51
percent to 158.40 metric
tons from a year earlier,
the China Gold Association
said in a press statement
sent via Wechat on
Friday. Overall
gold consumption climbed
almost 10 percent to 545.2
tons, including 330.8 tons
for jewelry sales, while
industrial demand and other
uses increased 9 percent.
U.S. coal exports have
jumped more than 60 percent
this year due to soaring
demand from Europe and Asia,
according to a Reuters
review of government data,
allowing President Donald
Trump's administration to
claim that efforts to revive
the battered industry are
working.
Science has shown time and
again that spending time in
nature — along with playing
in the dirt and gardening —
has a powerful impact on our
physiological and
psychological health. Over
the last decade, researchers
have explored why soil
microbes improve the
nutritional value of our
food and why rural children
— like those who live on
farms — are far healthier
than their city-dwelling
counterparts. Clean air,
water, and fresh produce
aside, one of the main
factors for the health of
farm-living kids boils down
to soil microbes. As it
turns out, these microbes
help develop healthy human
immune systems. Not only
that, but soil organisms can
boost our production of
serotonin — a feel-good
neurotransmitter that keeps
anxiety and depression at
bay.
Even though this may not
come as a surprise to most
of you, it is still
something that is happening
all around us, all the time,
and right under our noses:
Google is quietly recording
everything we do, from
conversations we have over
the phone and texts to
videos we send and create
over webcams and camera
phones. As if that
weren’t enough, they are
even tracking our movements
and logging every place we
visit.
One of the nation’s
largest cybersecurity
conferences is inviting
attendees to get hands-on
experience hacking a slew of
voting machines,
demonstrating to researchers
how easy the process can be.
“It took me only a few
minutes to see how to hack
it,” said security
consultant Thomas Richards,
glancing at a Premier
Election Solutions machine
currently in use in Georgia.
Iran's elite Revolutionary
Guard said Saturday a U.S.
Navy aircraft carrier fired
a warning shot in an
"unprofessional"
confrontation with Iranian
vessels, the official IRNA
news agency reported
In our toxin-filled world,
we often look to government
agencies to tell us what
levels of exposure we should
consider safe or unsafe. If
our exposure does not exceed
an agency-determined
threshold, we assume there
is little cause for concern.
How do regulatory agencies
determine these thresholds?
There is considerable
evidence to suggest that
safety limits are
often arbitrary and do not
accurately flag risks.
The Oklahoma panhandle will
soon be home to the largest
wind farm in the United
States, and the second
largest in the world. GE
Renewable Energy and
Invenergy have announced the
new 2,000-MW facility will
be built over the next few
years as part of the Wind
Catcher Energy Connection
project.
According to researchers at
Queen's University Belfast,
around 20,000 metric tons of
aluminum foil is tossed away
in the UK each year – enough
to stretch to the Moon and
back. This prompted
chemistry researcher Ahmed
Osman to look for new ways
to put all that waste to
use. Working with the
school's engineers, Osman
has now come up with a way
to turn used tinfoil into a
catalyst for biofuel that
could not only be more
environmentally friendly,
but more cost-effective too.
Solar activity is likely to
be low with a slight chance
for an M-class flare on days
one, two, and three (01 Aug,
02 Aug, 03 Aug). The
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet
levels on days one and three
(01 Aug, 03 Aug) and quiet
to unsettled levels on day
two (02 Aug).
Facetiousness aside, Shell
has been pumping out
gasoline (and cigarettes,
and hot-dogs and lottery
tickets) at service stations
for decades. What's
interesting is the emphasis
this business -- along with
all of Shell's downstream
operations,
including refining and
chemicals -- is getting
these days.
As you may or may not have
already heard, a former DNC
staff member was arrested
and charged with bank fraud,
though this could be one
amongst a long list of
charges to come. Imran Awan,
an IT aide of DNC
Representative Debbie
Wasserman-Schultz, was
arrested Monday night at
Dulles Airport in Northern
Virginia in an attempt to
flee the country to
Pakistan. His arrest came
after wiring $283,000 from
the Congressional Federal
Credit Union to Pakistan.
Department of Health and
Human Services Sec. Tom
Price has said President
Donald Trump’s
administration will work to
dismantle key parts of the
Affordable Care Act if
Congress fails to act,
although Price pledged he
won’t do anything to hurt
Americans.
It’s no secret aloe vera is
one of the most popular
succulents around the world
today. For thousands of
years, it has been grown for
a variety of uses —
everything from oral health,
skin benefits, and even
dietary supplementation.
It’s also an example of when
traditional use held up to
heavy scrutiny and extensive
testing.
Anthony Scaramucci is out as
White House communications
director after just 11 days
on the job — and just hours
after former Gen. John Kelly
took over as President
Donald Trump's new chief of
staff.
Hoping to turn the page
on a tumultuous opening
chapter to his presidency,
Trump had insisted earlier
Monday that there was "no
chaos" in his White House as
he swore in the retired
Marine general as his second
chief of staff.
When they find their way
into landfill, electronic
waste like phones and
computers can wreak havoc on
groundwater supplies,
contaminating them with
toxic heavy metals like lead
and mercury. Scientists at
Rice University have come up
with new kind of filter made
from carbon nanotubes and
quartz fibers claimed to
cleanse water of 99 percent
of these types of metals.
What's more, they can be
washed out and used over and
over.
The
United States flew two
supersonic bombers over the
Korean Peninsula on Sunday
in a show of force against
North Korea following the
country’s latest
intercontinental ballistic
missile test. The U.S. also
said it conducted a
successful test of a missile
defense system located in
Alaska.
US coal carload counts
increased for the second
week and have reached a
level last seen in February,
Association of American
Railroads data showed
Wednesday.
For the
week ending July 22, the AAR
reported 88,304 coal
carloads traveled US
railways, up 2% from the
previous week and up 7% from
the year-ago week.
Russian President Vladimir
Putin expelled more than 700
United States diplomats from
his country on Sunday and
said there will be no
improvement in U.S.-Russian
relations anytime soon.