Category: Science and Stuff,

Whites Contribute More To Air Pollution — Minorities Bear The Burden

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Environment,, Infrastructure and Transportation,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Race,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

Scientists and policymakers have long known that black and Hispanic Americans tend to live in neighborhoods with more pollution of all kinds, than white Americans. …A driver of unequal health outcomes across the U.S.

…The researchers found that air pollution is disproportionately caused by white Americans’ consumption of goods and services, but disproportionately inhaled by black and Hispanic Americans.

…The most relevant air pollutant metric for human health is “particulate matter 2.5” or PM2.5. It represents the largest environmental health risk factor in the United States with higher levels linked to more cardiovascular problems, respiratory illness, diabetes and even birth defects. PM2.5 pollution is mostly caused by human activities, like burning fossil fuels or agriculture.

…The researchers generated maps of where different emitters, like agriculture or construction, caused PM2.5 pollution. Coal plants produced pockets of pollution in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, while agricultural emissions were concentrated in the Midwest and California’s central valley. “We then tied in census data to understand where different racial-ethnic groups live to understand exposure patterns,” says Hill.

…After accounting for population size differences, whites experience about 17 percent less air pollution than they produce, through consumption, while blacks and Hispanics bear 56 and 63 percent more air pollution, respectively, than they cause by their consumption, according to the study.

“These patterns didn’t seem to be driven by different kinds of consumption,” says Tessum, “but different overall levels.” In other words, whites were just consuming disproportionately more of the same kinds of goods and services resulting in air pollution than minority communities.

…PM2.5 exposure by all groups has fallen by about 50 percent from 2002 to 2015, driven in part by regulation and population movement away from polluted areas. But the inequity remains mostly unchanged.

Whites Contribute More To Air Pollution — Minorities Bear The Burden : Shots – Health News : NPR

hmmmm

Deep sea creatures in the Mariana Trench eat plastic and introduce it into the food chain, study finds

On By peanutgallerynhIn Environment,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

Amphipods had plastic fibers and particles in their digestive systems, known as the hindgut. The deeper the trench, the more fibers they found.

…Sixty-six percent of the plastic they found was blue fibers. Black, red, and purple fragments were also present, along with blue and pink fragments.

No trench was fiber-free, and more than 80 percent of the amphipods contained them. When tested, the fibers were the same used in textiles, and the study suggests they entered the ocean after leaching from washing machines.

…Amphipods are becoming a vector to transport plastic particles into the food web.

“The amphipods they are finding fibers in are prey for larger fish and those larger fish are prey for even larger predators,” she says. …“And that puts these fibers into the food web. We are finding larger organisms with intestines lined with microfibers. They found a baleen whale that had been beached and when they cut it open, the intestines were lined with these smaller particles.

Deep sea creatures in the Mariana Trench eat plastic, study finds

sigh…

Apple’s iCloud was down for several hours today – The Verge

On By peanutgallerynhIn Media and Culture,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

[Apple] reported ongoing issues across almost all of its iCloud services beginning at 11AM ET today, which lasted until 3:28pm.

Apple didn’t offer any details about what the issues are, just that “some users are affected,” and “users may be unable to access this service.” But according to the company’s support page, the problem was widespread. iCloud sign in, Backup, Calendar, Contacts, Mail, Keychain, iCloud Drive file storage, iWork, Photos, Notes, Reminders, Find My iPhone, and more were all apparently affected by the issue.

The iCloud outage marks the third major tech outage in as many days, following Gmail and Google Drive issues earlier in the week and yesterday’s widespread Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram outages.

Apple’s iCloud was down for several hours today – The Verge

hmmm

DNA reveals that local men were replaced in Iberian gene pool thousands of years ago

On By peanutgallerynhIn Europe,, Race,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

Iberia was also relatively warm during the last Ice Age, between 18,000 and 24,000 years ago, presenting a more welcoming climate for animals and people who retreated from the rest of Europe.

…The researchers also discovered that between 8000 BC and 5500 BC, Iberia’s hunter-gatherers were genetically different from each other. This suggests that they interacted with a different group of hunter-gatherers during the Mesolithic era before Anatolian farmers, or those from what is presently Turkey, moved to Iberia and transformed the area yet again. The farmers also mixed with hunter-gatherers, according to their DNA

…Beginning in 2500 BC, the researchers discovered, Iberians were joined by people from central Europe whose showed genetic ancestry from the Russian steppe. And over a few hundred years, the locals and the central Europeans interbred.

Before this, there is no evidence that locals came into contact with anyone from outside the area. But that changed after 2000 BC, when 40% of Iberian ancestry and 100% of the fathers in the study could be traced back to central Europe.

…The research also sheds light on why the language and culture of present-day Basques are so distinct from those of Iberians. The modern people of Basque Country, in northern Spain, are genetically similar to the Iberian Iron Age people with ancestry from the Russian steppe. While people around them mixed with different groups and changed, the Basques held on to their heritage.

…Genetic data will need a boost from what anthropology and archaeology can show about the underlying causes for why this Y chromosome shift happened, the researchers said.

DNA reveals that local men were replaced in Iberian gene pool thousands of years ago – CNN

hmmm

Men who lived in Spain 4500 years ago left almost no male genetic legacy today

On By peanutgallerynhIn Europe,, Race,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

Men who lived on the Iberian Peninsula 4500 years ago …were replaced as new farming cultures swept into the region and drove them out of the gene pool. …The findings suggest that far from being an isolated cul-de-sac of Europe, Iberia experienced massive changes in ancestry, as waves of hunter-gatherers, farmers, Romans, and others mixed with the local population over the course of thousands of years.

…Central Europeans who were descendants of herders from the grasslands of Eastern Europe and Russia, appeared in Iberia, starting in the early Bronze Age 4500 years ago. They probably introduced an early Indo-European language. …At first, the European farmers lived alongside the farmers already in Spain. ….But within a few hundred years, nearly all the Y chromosomes from Iberian farmers were gone—and replaced by the central Europeans farmers’ DNA.

This meant that somehow, the new migrants replaced 40% of genetic heritage of the Spanish and Portuguese. …”The archaeological record gives no clear evidence of a burst of violence in this period.” 

…Still more immigrants came in historical times: first Romans and then Muslim North Africans. At one point 500 years ago, far more people of North African ancestry lived in Spain than today, before Christian kingdoms pushed the Muslim states south and eventually expelled them.

Men who lived in Spain 4500 years ago left almost no male genetic legacy today | Science | AAAS

hmmm

Cash from N.Y., feds tests 100K rape kits, leads to 1K arrests

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Chick Stuff,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

100,000 sexual assault cases around the country has been sent for DNA testing with money from a New York prosecutor and federal authorities, spurring over 1,000 arrests and hundreds of convictions in three years, officials said Tuesday.

…Financed with $38 million from settlements in banking-related cases, [NY] dispatched more than 55,000 rape kits to testing labs.

…Meanwhile, another nearly 45,000 rape kits have been sent to labs through the Justice Department program — and it’s produced nearly 899 prosecutions and 498 convictions and plea bargains, according to data the agency provided Monday to The Associated Press.

…It’s estimated that another 155,000 or more sex assault evidence kits still await testing, and thousands of results have yet to be linked to suspects. Many who have been identified can’t be prosecuted because of legal time limits and other factors.

…The backlog built up over decades, partly due to the cost of tests that can run $1,000 or more.

But victims’ advocates also say many sex assault cases simply got sidelined over the years by police and prosecutors who unduly disbelieved or downplayed victims’ allegations.

Cash from N.Y., feds tests 100K rape kits, leads to 1K arrests

hmmmm

A Crusade In The Philippines Takes On The Big Brands Behind Plastic Waste

On By peanutgallerynhIn Environment,, Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Southern Central Asia,Leave a comment

With a growing economy and a swelling middle class, people are consuming at a torrid pace — electronic devices, packaged foods, fancy toiletries — goods either made of plastic or wrapped in it.

… In many places, informal cadres of waste pickers collect what they can sell to recyclers. But much of the plastic cannot be recycled. So no one collects it, and it drifts. Everywhere.

…The same problem besets them all — it’s not just too much plastic but it’s the stuff that can’t be recycled. There’s nowhere to put it, except in landfills, which are few, and from which plastic eventually migrates, by wind or water.

…Crispian Lao, who used to be in the plastics industry and [now, in a somewhat Orwellian twist,] is now head of the Philippine Alliance for Recycling and Materials Sustainability. The group represents …companies like Unilever, Coca-Cola, Nestlé and others that make and package consumer goods.

Lao praises the sachets for [being easily identifiable] in a market where counterfeit goods are common. “There’s also the health issue,” he says: Sachets don’t pose health risks to the consumers in places where water to wash reusable containers might be contaminated. [The peanut gallery imagines this is the argument against a system where the consumer could bring their own packaging for the goods they are buying? Because corporate savior?]

…[Research] showed that the biggest sources of plastic waste washing into the oceans are in Southeast and South Asia.

Fingers were pointed.

…People in the Philippines were angry — among them, Grate. It was blaming the victim, not the manufacturers.

…Talk of future recycling still puts the burden of cleanup on the consumer. “The problem,” Grate says, “is that most companies … feel their responsibility ends the moment they sell it. That’s one of the biggest injustices here.”

…As for the pledge [to sell all products in recyclable packaging by] 2025, no one knows how companies will do it and how much it will cost to set up a huge recycling system across the islands of the Philippines.

…The plan was to challenge companies. Says Hernandez: “If we cannot recycle it or compost this material, then you should not be producing them in the first place.”

…Grate and other local activists in the Philippines proposed a novel action, something no one had done before: brand audits.

These environmental groups did regular beach cleanups, which helped bring attention to the problem even if the beaches were covered with trash again a few months later. But now they wanted to compile a list of the brand logos emblazoned on the plastic trash and publicize them for all to see.

A Crusade In The Philippines Takes On The Big Brands Behind Plastic Waste : Goats and Soda : NPR

hmmmm

Google employee breaks record for calculating pi

On By peanutgallerynhIn Chick Stuff,, Media and Culture,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

A Google employee named Emma Haruka Iwao has used Google’s cloud-computing service to break the world record for calculating pi, an infinite number vital to engineering.

…Iwao — a cloud developer advocate who has been working at Google for over three years — successfully calculated pi to 31 trillion digits, beating the previous record by 9 trillion.

Google employee breaks record for calculating pi – Business Insider

cool

Men in Spain were almost completely wiped out 4,500 to 4,000 years ago

On By peanutgallerynhIn Europe,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

Iberia’s population has changed drastically over time, from its hunter-gatherer origins before the arrival of farming 7,500 years ago, through to the medieval period and modern times.

…An influx of new people during the later Copper Age. …By the Early Bronze Age, 500 years later, these newcomers represented about 40% of Iberia’s genetic pool – but virtually 100% of their male lineages. 

…The same shift was not observed for women whose DNA remained relatively ‘local.’

…’We reveal sporadic contacts between Iberia and North Africa by 2500 BC and, by 2000 BC, the replacement of 40% of Iberia’s ancestry and nearly 100% of its Y-chromosomes by people with Steppe ancestry.’ 

What is even more striking now is that both Iberia and India had a similar source – a population of early metal-using stock breeders, who lived to the north of the Black Sea on Russian steppe lands, 5,000 years ago. 

They fanned out in both directions, west across Europe and east into Asia, their based  economy, domesticated horses and wheeled wagons giving them a crucial advantage over the indigenous farming populations. 

Moreover, they are also thought to have brought the Indo-European languages spoken across Europe and India today. 

Around 2,500 BC, the researchers found, Iberians began living alongside newcomers from central Europe who carried recent ancestry from those people on the Russian steppe. 

…’Resolving the population dynamics in western Europe during the Copper and Bronze Ages is a big step towards understanding the origins of the Celtic languages, which were spoken across western Europe before the rise of the Roman Empire.’ 

How men in Spain were almost completely wiped out between 4,500 and 4,000 years ago | Daily Mail Online

hmmm

A little surprised the article did not include any known corresponding social/political history. It seems there is a hypothesis to be drawn between the disappearance of a male population and a sustained pattern of invasion and colonization that almost merits mentioning here.

It Sounds Crazy, But Fukushima, Chernobyl, And Three Mile Island Show Why Nuclear Is Inherently Safe

On By peanutgallerynhIn Environment,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

It Sounds Crazy, But Fukushima, Chernobyl, And Three Mile Island Show Why Nuclear Is Inherently Safe

Ta fuck it does… Who pitched this story? The Nuclear power plant lobby?

Psssst, double-speaking dipshits: “Not as bad as we thought,” does not, in any way, equal, “inherently safe.”

For fuck’s sake….

Typhus and Tuberculosis Are Spreading in Homeless Populations

On By peanutgallerynhIn Money, Class, and Poverty,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

Los Angeles recently experienced an outbreak of typhus—a disease spread by infected fleas on rats and other animals—in downtown streets.

…The diseases have flared as the nation’s homeless population has grown in the past two years.

…The diseases spread quickly and widely among people living outside or in shelters, helped along by sidewalks contaminated with human feces, crowded living conditions, weakened immune systems, and limited access to health care.

“The hygiene situation is just horrendous” for people living on the streets. …“It becomes just like a Third World environment, where their human feces contaminate the areas where they are eating and sleeping.”

…People living on the streets or in homeless shelters are vulnerable to such outbreaks because their weakened immune systems are worsened by stress, malnutrition, and sleep deprivation. Many also have mental illness and substance-abuse disorders, which can make it harder for them to stay healthy or get health care.

…Typhus is a bacterial infection that can cause a high fever, stomach pain, and chills but can be treated with antibiotics. Outbreaks are more common in overcrowded and trash-filled areas that attract rats.

…“It really is unconscionable,” says Bobby Watts, the CEO of the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, a policy and advocacy organization. “These are all preventable diseases.”

Typhus and Tuberculosis Are Spreading in Homeless Populations – The Atlantic

Jeezus….

Why Self-Checkout Is and Has Always Been the Worst

On By peanutgallerynhIn Money, Class, and Poverty,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

In short, so as long as they allow the chain to justify reducing hours of its part-time employees, it’s probably worth it. “Supermarket retailers operate on extremely thin profit margins, so at the end of the day it can turn out that even after you tabulate all of these many downsides, there is a very small profit advantage that justifies their existence for retailers,” she says.

She also worries about the next wave of automated shopping—a la Amazon Go, which really might actually stand to “work” seamlessly—just at the cost of shoppers and workers subjecting themselves to corporate surveillance on a much wider scale. And going cashless, as Amazon Go mandates, disadvantages poorer customers who might not have credit cards or digital payment accounts. “So some of the clunkiness of automated checkout could, in theory, be solved with better technology,” Mateescu says, “but with so many tradeoffs it’s worth asking where it begins to be a solution in search of a problem.”

And that’s what this thoroughly shitty example of shitty automation boils down to. This is a service that was never intended to serve customers, but rather specifically (though clumsily) designed to cut or trim jobs—as such, it’s little surprise that it serves no one. 

Why Self-Checkout Is and Has Always Been the Worst

hmmm

National Butterfly Center to file restraining order on border wall

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Environment,, Local Interest,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

Customs and Border Protection and the Army Corps of Engineers have awarded Galveston-based SLSCO a $145 million contract to build the first six miles of a border-levee wall system along the U.S.-Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

This includes about 200 acres of land that sits on the center’s property south of a levee, about two miles inland from the Rio Grande River. 

The land was set aside for the protection of a remnant of native habitat, endangered species such as the ocelot, and the graves of Native American people.

…The center has filed lawsuits to stop construction of the wall. Additional lawsuits filed by the Center for Biological Diversity challenged the waivers granted by the Supreme Court.

These cases are still working their way through the federal court system.

National Butterfly Center to file restraining order on border wall

hmmmm

China has Just Grown a Cotton Plant on the Far Side of the Moon

On By peanutgallerynhIn Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

On January 2nd China’s Chang’e-4 lander landed on the moon and managed to grow a cotton plant there. The seed was kept in an air tight canister filled with soil and supplied with air and water, all the necessary ingredients for the plant to sprout.

Besides cotton, potato, [canola,] arabidopsis flowers, yeast and fruit fly eggs were included in the experiment. The container was designed to be a mini eco-system — a small garden that would allow for the most important ingredients supporting the possibility of life on the moon.

China has Just Grown a Cotton Plant on the Far Side of the Moon

Wild.

A link between brain damage and religious fundamentalism has now been established by scientists

On By peanutgallerynhIn Media and Culture,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

One study showed individuals with vmPFC lesions rated radical political statements as more moderate than people with normal brains, while another showed a direct connection between vmPFC damage and religious fundamentalism.

…These findings are important because they suggest that impaired functioning in the prefrontal cortex—whether from brain trauma, a psychological disorder, a drug or alcohol addiction, or simply a particular genetic profile—can make an individual susceptible to religious fundamentalism. And perhaps in other cases, extreme religious indoctrination harms the development or proper functioning of the prefrontal regions in a way that hinders cognitive flexibility and openness.

A link between brain damage and religious fundamentalism has now been established by scientists | Salon.com

No shit, Sherlock?

Ocean Cleanup Of Plastic Pollution In The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Breaks

On By peanutgallerynhIn Environment,, Pacific Basin,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

But as Slat, now 24, recently discovered with the beta tester for his design, plastic occasionally drifts out of its U-shaped funnel. The other issue with the beta tester, called System 001, is that last week, a 60-feet-long end section broke off.

…”In principle, I think we are relatively close to getting it working,” Slat said in an interview Saturday with NPR’s Michel Martin. “It’s just that sometimes the plastic is also escaping again. Likely what we have to do is we have to speed up the system so that it constantly moves faster than the plastic.”

For the material failure, Slat said his team will probably try to locally reinforce the system to combat the problem of material fatigue.

“If you have a paper clip and you move that back and forward many times, essentially the material gets weaker,” he said. “That’s likely what has happened with material of the cleanup system.”

…He estimates that about 8 million metric tons of plastic go into the ocean each year — roughly the equivalent of one dump truck full of plastic every minute.

Ocean Cleanup Of Plastic Pollution In The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Breaks : NPR

hmmmm

Repurposing Existing Drugs for New Indications

On By peanutgallerynhIn Money, Class, and Poverty,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

Many academic researchers are turning their attention to existing drugs as a potential goldmine of therapies that are cheaper and faster to move into the clinic, and they’re getting more methodical in their approach. Stephen Wong, a biomedical engineer at the Houston Methodist Research Institute in Texas, switched his focus from novel drug discovery to repurposing nine years ago when he realized the breadth and depth of clinical trials and basic science information available online. That has “really changed everything for drug development,” he says. Wong’s lab culls and archives publicly available omics research databases, journal articles and conference abstracts, human clinical trial data, patents, and Houston Methodist’s database of longitudinal patient records, as well as privately generated omics data from preclinical disease models. The researchers then mine the information to identify molecules and combinations of molecules that match disease targets and pathways using artificial intelligence algorithms. “We call our technology the DrugX engine,” says Wong. “It’s like Google but for drug discovery.”

…While academic labs continue to churn out new leads, they often encounter difficulties garnering industry interest to support trials for a new use of a generic drug. After Eric Verdin, president and CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California, and his colleagues identified two possible clinical uses for an aspirin derivative in mice,5,6 for example, the team was unable to find a partner to move the compounds into clinical trials. “I’m becoming disenchanted with drug repurposing,” Verdin says. “It’s impossible to get funding from venture capitalists or even from our institution’s intellectual property office.” Verdin said he was advised to modify the molecules to make them unique, such that they would be patentable and generate revenue. “But [if the generic version works], this is completely the opposite of what one should do with this type of discovery,” he says.

…Due to this lack of monetary incentive, “generic drugs found to work for a new disease are in a state of purgatory,” says Wegner. Indeed, no generic drug has ever been approved for a new indication by a manufacturer without modification of the drug’s delivery or its dose, which would provide renewed patent protection.

Repurposing Existing Drugs for New Indications | The Scientist Magazine®

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