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Arctic Ozone Loss 'Unprecedented,' Scientists Say

Tue, 2011-10-04 22:41 — Kathy Gilbeaux

by Emily Chung - CBC News - October 3, 2011

Left: Ozone in Earth's stratosphere at an altitude of approximately 12 miles (20 kilometers) in mid-March 2011, near the peak of the 2011 Arctic ozone loss. Right: chlorine monoxide – the primary agent of chemical ozone destruction in the cold polar lower stratosphere – for the same day and altitude. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Environment Canada cuts could disable future Canadian measurements

Unusual winter weather in the atmosphere high above the Earth's surface caused an "unprecedented" loss of protective ozone over the Arctic this year, scientists say.

The ozone layer in the stratosphere, located about 15 to 35 kilometres above the Earth's surface, protects the Earth from the sun's ultraviolet rays and harmful effects such as skin cancer. While an ozone hole has formed in the stratosphere over the Antarctic each spring since the mid 1980s, a paper published in Nature on Sunday marks the first time scientists have reported a comparable loss over the Arctic.

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IT and Information Sharing Environments for Community Health Resilience

Thu, 2011-09-29 09:44 — mdmcdonald

Information Technology (IT) and Information Sharing Environments (ISEs) are crucial to the evolution of community health resilience. Most people working to improve community health resilience do not understand the nuances of Information Sharing Environments, and how the rapid shifts in IT, mobile devices, social media, cloud computing, peer to peer parallel processing, smart grids, and the linking of millions of people, mobile devices, computers, and sensors are creating a societal mind, which is transforming community health resilience and the health and human security of Americans.

If you have thoughts on these topics, please comment within this collaboratory thread.

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Mexican Editor's Death Linked to Work with Social Media

Wed, 2011-09-28 22:33 — admin

By the CNN Wire Staff

September 28, 2011

Message reportedly found near the body blames social networks

MEXICO CITY (CNN) -- Amnesty International said Monday that a newspaper editor whose decapitated body was found over the weekend in the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo appears to have been targeted by a drug gang carrying out a reprisal for her work on social networks.

Though no investigation has yet been carried out, a message was found next to the body indicating that she was killed by members of organized crime "in retaliation for the information that the victim had distributed in social networks denouncing the activities of criminals in Nuevo Laredo," the human rights group said in a statement posted on its website.

The decapitated body of Maria Elizabeth Macias, the editor of Primera Hora, a daily newspaper based in Nuevo Laredo in the eastern state of Tamaulipas, was found Saturday morning.

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The Power of the 21st Century Librarian

Wed, 2011-09-28 11:19 — mdmcdonald

Michael D. McDonald, Dr.P.H.

It can be argued that libraries have their origins in the swarm behavior of individuals and groups acquiring and sharing cultural artifacts (e.g, pictographs, books) as the fundamental repositories of knowledge within a community and the broader society. Librarians have played a key role in the founding and differentiation of America at its origins. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, for example, played key roles in deepening and broadening the tradition of knowledge sharing within the early United States.

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Robert Kuttner: Can Europe Be Spared Cascading Collapse?

Tue, 2011-09-27 09:47 — mdmcdonald

The failure of the European authorities to arrest the speculative run on Greek bonds and the sense of inevitable wider collapse reminds me of the diplomatic failures that led to World War I.

In the summer of 1914, myopic bluffing by Europe's key leaders produced a catastrophe that nobody wanted. It began in Serbia, a small nationalistic province of a decaying Austro-Hungarian empire, but the conflagration soon spread to all of Europe like a chain of firecrackers. No leader was farsighted enough to grasp the wider common stakes and head off disaster. Each pursued only narrow self-interest.

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'Wi-fi Refugees' Shelter in West Virginia Mountains

Wed, 2011-09-14 10:32 — Kathy Gilbeaux

BBC News - September 12, 2011

Nichols Fox lives alone in a home powered primarily by gas just outside the Quiet Zone

Dozens of Americans who claim to have been made ill by wi-fi and mobile phones have flocked to the town of Green Bank, West Virginia

There are five billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide and advances in wireless technology make it increasingly difficult to escape the influence of mobile devices. But while most Americans seem to embrace continuous connectivity, some believe it's making them physically ill.

Diane Schou is unable to hold back the tears as she describes how she once lived in a shielded cage to protect her from the electromagnetic radiation caused by waves from wireless communication.

"It's a horrible thing to have to be a prisoner," she says. "You become a technological leper because you can't be around people.

"It's not that you would be contagious to them - it's what they're carrying that is harmful to you."

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Explosion at French Nuclear Waste Plant

Mon, 2011-09-12 16:21 — Kathy Gilbeaux

The Guardian - September 12, 2011

Rescue workers and medics land by helicopter at the Marcoule nuclear site, in France. Photograph: Claude Paris/AP

An explosion at a French nuclear waste processing plant that killed one person and injured four others sparked fears of a radioactive leak on Monday.

An emergency safety cordon was thrown around the Marcoule nuclear site near Nimes in the south of France immediately after a furnace used to melt nuclear waste exploded and caused a fire. It was lifted later in the day after France's nuclear safety agency, the Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire (ASN), said there was no danger to the public.

Reports said the body of one male worker at the plant had been "found carbonised", but there was no evidence that the explosion had caused any radioactive leak, though the ASN admitted there was the "possibility of a leak of low-level radioactivity, but no shooting of radioactivity in the air". There was no information as to the cause of the explosion.

The accident came just a week after the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, bucked the anti-nuclear trend following Japan's Fukushima disaster and pledged €1bn (£860m) of new investment in atomic power.

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Microbes Generate Electricity While Cleaning Up Nuclear Waste

Wed, 2011-09-07 16:41 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Michigan State University - September 6, 2011

Homeland Security Newswire - September 7, 2011

MSU microbiologist Gemma Reguera (right) and her team of researchers have unraveled the mystery of how microbes generate electricity while cleaning up nuclear waste. Photo by Michael Steger.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Researchers at Michigan State University have unraveled the mystery of how microbes generate electricity while cleaning up nuclear waste and other toxic metals.

Details of the process, which can be improved and patented, are published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The implications could eventually benefit sites forever changed by nuclear contamination, said Gemma Reguera, MSU microbiologist.

“Geobacter bacteria are tiny micro-organisms that can play a major role in cleaning up polluted sites around the world,” said Reguera, who is an MSU AgBioResearch scientist. “Uranium contamination can be produced at any step in the production of nuclear fuel, and this process safely prevents its mobility and the hazard for exposure.”

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