Science division of White House office left empty as last staffers depart – CBS News
Jeezus Krrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreyest
Category: Science and Stuff,
Microplastics found in the Sargasso Sea – CNN
Embedded in most of the sargassum are the easily visible pieces of trash: shampoo bottles, fishing gear, thick hard containers or thin soft bags amongst many other types of plastic. One of the scientists points out fish bite marks in a small plastic sheet we pull out. But what is really jarring is when you dive down and look into the blue and realize you are surrounded by tiny glittering pieces of broken up plastic.
…Greenpeace scientists say they found “extreme” concentrations of microplastic pollution in the Sargasso Sea, although they are still reviewing their findings. In one sample, they discovered almost 1,300 fragments of microplastic — more than the levels found last year in the notorious Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
…A study off the shore of Bermuda back in the early 1970s found 3,500 pieces of plastic per square kilometer. A more recent, as yet unpublished study by the Bermuda Aquarium Museum and Zoo found that nearly 42% of fish samples had ingested microplastics.
…Only around 9% of plastic produced has ever been recycled. [A lot] single-use plastics end up in landfills or are burned in huge toxic fires. Some finds its way into our rivers or the oceans.
“This goes into the food chain.” Ojeda explains. “The fish and shrimps eat the plastic, we are eating them or the fish that eat them, and this will end up in our bodies.”
…The weight of evidence that humans are contaminating one of our major food sources is overwhelming — not only introducing potential toxins into our own bodies, but also polluting whole ecosystems.
…Few of us witness what is out in the open oceans far from our homes, which is one of the many challenges for ocean protection and why few truly understand how dire the situation is. Out of sight, out of mind.
But in reality, it’s ending up right back in front of us — and inside us — even though we may not see it.
…”We need to look at the types of plastic we are using and eliminate the ones that can’t be recycled. We need to tidy up land-based sources (landfills and the like).”
…”If you as a consumer are going to the supermarket and you are unable to buy something which is not wrapped in plastic it’s not your fault. …It’s companies; companies need to take the step, need to lead the change — and governments need to push the companies.
For the oceans to recover to we need to stop them (plastics) now. If we are thinking we can stop them in 10 years, we can phase them out, no: we need to stop single-use plastic. Then the seas will have time to clean up.”
Microplastics found in the Sargasso Sea – CNN
hmmmm
DEA’s latest promise to facilitate medical cannabis research should be viewed with skepticism
The agency has dragged its feet on this issue for decades. Under federal regulations dating back to the late 1960s, only a single licensed entity — the University of Mississippi — is permitted to cultivate and provide cannabis for clinical research purposes.
…This monopoly has stifled clinical investigations into the marijuana plant. Notably, the cannabis grown by the University is often of inferior quality and fails to accurately reflect the types of varieties commercially available in the United States.
Further, the University only provides scientists with the option to access herbal cigarette formulations of the plant, not concentrates, edibles, or extracts —varieties that are commonly available in legal states.
…(CBD) — a chemical of particular interest to many scientists — are also not currently available from the University.
…So, should we take the DEA’s pledge seriously this time? Arguably, the answer is no. Notably, the agency’s latest pronouncement provides no time-table for action, and in fact, lays the groundwork for even further delays.
hmmm
David Koch reshaped America for the worse. His life’s work was the destruction of others
“villain”
…Indeed, such is the appropriate term for a profoundly wealthy man who relies on a shadowy network of political advocacy groups to sell unpopular, detrimental policies to unsuspecting voters for the purposes of personal gain.
…David and Charles, colloquially known as the infamous “Koch Brothers,” poured money into causes like climate change denial to ensure their fossil fuel empire remained profitable for as long possible. ….They went after unions through proxies like former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. They targeted Social Security for privatization. According to one report, they even tried to hamper cleanup efforts after Hurricane Katrina.
And these are just some of the worthy causes David Koch and his brother used their vast fortunes to pursue. The reality is, given the porous nature of America’s campaign finance laws, there is no way of truly knowing the complete extent of their political ventures.
mmmhmmm
Maine Voices: Lobstermen threatened with the extinction of their way of life
In response to the threat of lawsuits, the National Marine Fisheries Service has pressured Maine into a proposal to reduce, by 50 percent, the number of vertical lines Maine fishermen use to haul their lobster traps. The only problem with this is that there is not one instance where a right whale entanglement and/or death was proven to have been caused by a Maine vertical fishing line.
Most Maine lobster gear is tended much closer to the coast than right whales would normally traverse. There are rare exceptions, but the vast majority of whales travel far offshore through the Gulf of Maine. Most Maine fishermen have never seen a right whale, including fishermen offshore, who already fish long trawls to reduce the number of vertical lines as much as can be safely done.
Maine Voices: Lobstermen threatened with the extinction of their way of life – CentralMaine.com
sigh….
Lā Ho‘iho‘i Ea Observed at Maunakea
The demonstration started 18 days ago by various groups who believe that Maunakea is sacred and say construction atop the mountain will further desecrate the site. On Tuesday, the governor rescinded an emergency proclamation at Maunakea and the state issued a two-year extension to Sept. 26, 2021 on the deadline to initiate construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope project atop the mountain.
Maui Now : Lā Ho‘iho‘i Ea Observed at Maunakea, Jason Momoa Visits
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Edible film made from essential oils can protect foods better than plastic
Using low-speed mixing and ultrasonication techniques, the researchers formed coarse emulsions and nanoemulsions, respectively, of both clove bud (Syzygium aromaticum) and oregano (Origanum vulgare). They then added methylcellulose, a type of edible fiber, in order to create film sheets out of the essential oils.
When they applied the edible sheets to preservative-free bread, the team observed a marked decrease in both yeast and mold counts after 15 days, with the smaller-sized particles providing more enhanced preservation. Compared to calcium propionate and plastic, the essential oil sheets maintained the bread’s freshness for longer and did not wear off like conventional preservatives.
…”Leachables from plastics can include everything from leftover monomer building blocks to additives used to make plastic strong or malleable,” reads a report by Chemical & Engineering News, which is published by the American Chemical Society (ACS).
“Probably the most infamous leachable from plastics is bisphenol A (BPA), which is used as a building block in polycarbonate bottles and in the epoxy-resin liners of metal cans.”
Edible film made from essential oils can protect foods better than plastic – NaturalNews.com
The freshness is nice but a few questions…
What is the shelf-life?
What happens when it gets wet?
How complicated and expensive is it to make?
And last but certainly not least, it’s less about the freshness and more about a substitute for plastic packaging.
Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI): A Systemic Approach to Complex Developmental Trauma
Children and youth who have experienced foster care or orphanage-rearing have often experienced complex developmental trauma, demonstrating an interactive set of psychological and behavioral issues. Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) is a therapeutic model that trains caregivers to provide effective support and treatment for at-risk children. TBRI has been applied in orphanages, courts, residential treatment facilities, group homes, foster and adoptive homes, churches, and schools. It has been used effectively with children and youth of all ages and all risk levels. This article provides the research base for TBRI and examples of how it is applied.
Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI): A Systemic Approach to Complex Developmental Trauma
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Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains
While changes in the travel industry have tended to pressure night trains off the market, it’s clear that there is still some appetite for them among travelers. When Germany’s Deutsche Bahn halted its night services in 2017, Austrian Federal Railways took over some of the key routes. The takeover has proved to be a success, with passenger numbers on the services …rising from 1.4 million to 1.6 million between 2017 and 2018, a rise in profits, and talk of expansion. Meanwhile, well-established leisure services such as the London-to-Scotland Caledonian Sleeper continue to thrive.
The overnight train services remain popular because many people actually like them. The duration of travel, of course, is usually far longer than by plane, even when layovers and security are factored in, but there are other compensations. Generally scheduled to leave late evening and arrive before the working day begins, night trains offer the possibility of sleep and more leisurely travel compared to an early-morning rush to the airport. They can also be reasonably priced: On the Vienna-to-Berlin night service, for example, a one-way ticket with a reclining sleeper seat starts at €29 ($32.50), a couchette (a four- or six-person compartment whose bunks fold down into comfortable seating during the day) at €49 ($55), and a single-berth sleeper with private toilet and shower at €139 ($159). If the trip saves you the cost of a hotel room, many people seem to be noting, that’s not a bad deal.
So while the outlook seemed bleak just a few years ago, Sweden’s plan arrives at a time when the sector’s fortunes seem to be brightening once more.
…Getting more people on the rails can only have a positive effect in reducing the carbon footprint of international mobility.
Sweden Wants to Revive Europe’s Overnight Trains – CityLab
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Irish Teen Wins 2019 Google Science Fair For Removing Microplastics From Water
Microplastics are defined as having a diameter of 5nm or less and are too small for filtering or screening during wastewater treatment. Microplastics are often included in soaps, shower gels, and facial scrubs for their ability to exfoliate the skin. Microplastics can also come off clothing during normal washing.
These microplastics then make their way into waterways and are virtually impossible to remove through filtration. Small fish are known to eat microplastics and as larger fish eat smaller fish these microplastics are concentrated into larger fish species that humans consume.
Ferreira used a combination of oil and magnetite powder to create a ferrofluid in the water containing microplastics. The microplastics combined with the ferrofluid which was then extracted.
After the microplastics bound to the ferrofluid, Ferreira used a magnet to remove the solution and leave only water.
After 1,000 tests, the method was 87% effective in removing microplastics of all sorts from water. The most effective microplastic removed was that from a washing machine with the hardest to remove being polypropylene plastics.
Irish Teen Wins 2019 Google Science Fair For Removing Microplastics From Water
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Rep. Cheney Accuses Tribes of “Destroying our Western Way of Life” Over Grizzly Protections
Removing protections from the bear, revered as sacred to a multitude of tribes, would have left the grizzly vulnerable to high-dollar trophy hunts and lifted leasing restrictions on some 34,375 square miles. Extractive industry, livestock and logging interests are among those desirous of capitalizing on the area, a region comprised of tribal treaty, reserved rights and ceded lands.
…“I would remind the Congresswoman that at the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition an estimated 100,000 grizzly bears roamed from the Missouri River to the Pacific Coast. That was all Indian Country. Now there are fewer than 2,000 grizzly bears and our people live in Third World conditions on meager reservations in the poorest counties in the US. Does she really want to talk about ‘destroying’ a ‘way of life’?” asked Rodgers.
…Tribal Nations, including the Oglala Sioux Tribe which petitioned for a Congressional inquiry into the influence of multi-national fossil-fuel corporations on FWS’s grizzly delisting decision, previously exposed the role of extractive industry in the process. USFWS engaged multinational oil and gas services group, Amec Foster Wheeler, for the peer review of its grizzly delisting rule that tribes and environmental groups deconstructed in court. Amec Foster Wheeler appointed Halliburton executive Jonathan Lewis as CEO in the same timeframe as USFWS contracted the company.
“That puts ‘harmful to the ecosystem’ into its true context,” responded Rodgers. “The Cheney family’s connections to Halliburton hardly needs elaborating upon,” added Chief Stan Grier, President of the Blackfoot Confederacy Chiefs.
…“There’s more chance of her father receiving the Nobel Peace Prize than her “Grizzly Bear State Management Act” reaching the House floor,” said Rodgers of Cheney’s bill.
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“We are in great danger”: In Amazon, indigenous Waiapi chief is killed by illegal miners
Illegal gold miners armed with automatic weapons and shotguns, invaded the remote indigenous community of the Waiapi and murdered one of its chiefs in Brazil’s northern Amazon last week
…One of the group’s leaders, Viseni Waiapi, said in an audio message sent to NBC reporters Saturday in Portuguese.
“We are in great danger,” Viseni said. The invaders assaulted women and children and were accompanied by a pit bull as they roamed around several Waiapi villages day and night last week, using special night vision goggles to navigate the area in the dark, he said.
…While waiting two days for the police to arrive, the Waiapi sent a group of their own warriors to guard the villages being invaded and gunshots were heard along the only road that leads into Waiapi territory. By the time police arrived on Sunday, the invaders had fled into the jungle.
…This attack on Waiapi land is one of the latest in a slew of ongoing, and increasingly frequent, invasions and assaults on indigenous territories throughout Brazil by illegal miners, ranchers and loggers.
Currently, there at least 10,000 miners illegally occupying and exploiting Brazil’s indigenous Yanomami land in northern Brazil. These sorts of invasions have increased by 150 percent since Brazil’s right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, took power earlier this year.
…Bolsonaro has repeatedly vowed to allow commercial mining and farming on indigenous lands, which are officially reserved for indigenous people’s exclusive use under Brazil’s Constitution since 1988.
…Bolsonaro has said that indigenous peoples do not have a culture and has compared them to zoo animals. He has also said they should be assimilated into the public or integrated into the army. Years ago, he suggested that Brazil should have killed off its indigenous peoples, saying “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry hasn’t been as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated the Indians.”
…These invaders are committing illegal activities and should be arrested, prosecuted and fined, she said, suggesting there be paid federal employees stationed on indigenous lands to help monitor and protect vulnerable groups like the Waiapi. The community remained completely isolated until the 1970s when it was nearly annihilated by a measles outbreak spread by illegal miners who got access through a new road.
Today, there are around 1500 Waiapi living in small thatched roof villages carved out of dense rainforest in Brazil’s northern state of Amapá near French Guiana. The community attributes its resilience to having well demarcated lands, which were officially recognized by the Brazilian government in 1996, and maintaining its traditional ways of living and protecting the rainforest.
…In the meantime, Watson said indigenous groups need GPS equipment, bulletproof vests and radios for their own land defense efforts. “If we do want to save the Amazon rainforest for the benefit of humanity, we have to find better and more immediate ways of supporting the indigenous peoples.”
…Watson said the current situation in Brazil’s Amazon region has become a “war zone” in which indigenous peoples are on the front lines protecting the world’s largest rainforest, which produces 20 percent of the planet’s oxygen. “They’re paying with their lives.”
“We are in great danger”: In Amazon, indigenous Waiapi chief is killed by illegal miners
sigh…
U of Hawaii pursues controversial Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea
Hawaiians’ protests have attracted the support of many across academe, who see the TMT — in the words of geneticist Keolu Fox of UC San Diego and physicist Chandra Prescod-Weinstein of the University of New Hampshire — as colonial science.
“Far from some replay of an ancient clash between tradition and modernity, this is a battle between the old ways of doing science, which rely on forceful extraction (whether of natural resources or data), and a new scientific method, which privileges the dignity and humanity of indigenous peoples, including Hawaiians and the black diaspora,” they wrote in The Nation. “It is a clash between colonial science — the one which, under the guise of progress, has all too often helped justify conquest and human rights violations — and a science that respects indigenous autonomy.”
Hulali Kau, a writer and advocate working in Native Hawaiian and environmental law, said, “To anyone that continues to try to frame TMT as a science versus culture argument, I would say that this struggle over the future of Mauna Kea is actually about how we manage resources and align our laws and values of Hawaii to connect a past where the state has subjected its indigenous people to continued mismanagement of it lands with its uncertain future.”
Among many concerns, including the university’s past management of the observation space, Kau said she worries that the TMT will include two 5,000 gallon tanks installed two stories below ground level for chemical and human waste.
Mauna Kea, a conservation district, is home to the largest aquifer in Hawaii, she said. “There are still questions as to the environmental consequences.”
Kau noted that the university was previously embroiled in an indigenous space dispute, when it attempted to patent three strains of taro, or “kalo,” a popular food source. It finally dropped the patents several years later, in 2006.
hmmmm
Divers Uncover Ancient Temple Submerged Within The ‘Egyptian Atlantis’
In their most recent underwater expedition, Egyptian and European experts have found significant remains of a large temple under the sea, as well as several ships laden with treasure such as coins and jewellery.
Archaeologists led by Franck Goddio, who was also in charge of the very first underwater exploration of Heracleion, think they have found the stone columns from the city’s main temple (called Amun Garp), as well as the remains of a smaller Greek temple.
…Heracleion (also known as Thonis) is thought to have been built during the 8th century BCE on the banks of the Nile river, and is so named because the hero Hercules himself once visited it – or so the legend goes.
…Exactly how it ended up underwater remains a mystery to historians, but the best guess is that rising sea levels, seismic activity, and crumbling foundations caused the entire city to slide into the Mediterranean, at least 1,000 years ago.
…As for the other finds besides the temples, the divers report coming across bronze coins from the reign of King Ptolemy II (283 to 246 BCE), plus pottery, jewellery, and storage utensils found in the remains of several ships.
The archaeologists also dug up coins from the Byzantine era, which means it’s likely that the city was inhabited from at least the fourth century BCE.
Divers Uncover Ancient Temple Submerged Within The ‘Egyptian Atlantis’
cool!
Federal prosecutors say they can’t find files on investigation into Rocky Flats nuclear arms plant
The U.S. Department of Justice has lost track of more than 60 boxes of documents from a 27-year-old criminal investigation into safety and environmental violations at a former nuclear weapons plant in Colorado, officials said Tuesday.
…Seven groups representing environmentalists, former nuclear workers, nearby residents and public health advocates filed a motion in federal court in January asking that the files be made public. The groups say the documents could show whether the government did enough to clean up the site before turning part of it into a wildlife refuge and opening it to hikers and bicyclists.
Government attorneys are fighting the request.
Jeezus…
FBI, TSA use of facial recognition tech needs cleaning up, say lawmakers
At a Tuesday hearing on facial recognition by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, lawmakers questioned how government agencies like the FBI and the Transportation Security Administration have been using the technology. The FBI faced heavy criticism for failing to meet the Government Accountability Office’s recommendations on accuracy, transparency and privacy issues.
“They still haven’t fixed the five things they were supposed to do when they started,” Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio and the ranking member of the oversight committee, said at the hearing. “But we’re supposed to believe ‘don’t worry, everything’s just fine.'”
Those five recommendations about the use of facial recognition systems include publishing privacy documents, conducting privacy impact assessments, improving sample sizes in accuracy tests, testing accuracy of partners, and conducting annual reviews of accuracy.
…The TSA uses facial recognition at airports, saying the technology speeds the check-in process, but critics have said the tech is being utilized without proper vetting or regulatory safeguards
…Researchers have pointed out that facial recognition tech can be flawed and can show race and gender bias, and civil rights advocates have argued that facial recognition threatens privacy and free speech.
FBI, TSA use of facial recognition tech needs cleaning up, say lawmakers – CNET
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