New fission suspected at Fukushima nuclear plant National

Nov. 02, 2011 - 03:00PM JST ( 38 ) TOKYO — The operator of Japan’s tsunami-crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant said Wednesday it feared nuclear fission had resumed inside one of the reactors. Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said it had begun injecting water and boric acid into No. 2 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which began leaking radiation after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. “We cannot rule out the possibility of a small nuclear fission reaction,” TEPCO spokesman Hiroki Kawamata said, adding that the injection was a precautionary measure. He said there was no fresh danger at the plant, as the reactor’s temperature and pressure, as well as radiation levels at monitoring posts, showed no substantial changes. Fission is the process by which an operating nuclear reactor produces power. The reactor automatically shut down in the wake of the disaster but nuclear fuel is believed to have melted through its container onto the bottom of the outer vessel when the tsunami knocked out the plant’s cooling systems. The injection was ordered after preliminary analysis of gas samples from the reactor building showed the possible presence of xenon 133 and xenon 135, byproducts of a nuclear reaction. The two substances have short half-lives—five days for xenon 133 and just nine hours for xenon 135—indicating that any nuclear fission was a recent phenomenon.

New Trouble Reported at Japan Nuclear Plant

by Eric Talmadge - Associated Press (AP) - msnbc.com - November 1, 2011  

          

An aerial photo taken by a small unmanned drone and released by AIR PHOTO SERVICE, damaged Unit 3, left, and Unit 4 of the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant are seen in Okuma, Fukushima prefecture, northeastern Japan on March 24, 2011. (AP / AIR PHOTO SERVICE)

Officials detected a radioactive gas associated with nuclear fission at Japan's tsunami-damaged atomic power plant Wednesday, indicating there could be a new problem at one of its reactors. They injected a substance that neutralizes nuclear reactions as a precaution.

Gas from inside the reactor indicated the presence of radioactive xenon, which could be the byproduct of unexpected nuclear fission. Boric acid was being injected through a cooling pipe as a countermeasure because it can counteract nuclear reactions.

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The Sky Is Falling In

submitted by Theresa Bernardo

by Cathy Buckle - cathybuckle.com - October 29, 2011

The chat in the queue at a government hospital Outpatients department this week was about the searing heat that has been beating down on the country in the last few days. The extremely high temperatures scorching Zimbabwe have been the national talking point as day after day we’ve looked up into dazzling blue skies without even a whisp of cloud. One woman in the hospital queue said that God must have dropped the sun, letting it fall down lower in the sky. People laughed and her words made me think of Chicken Licken, Turkey Lurkey and all their mates who were sure the sky was falling in! Someone else in the hospital queue said that this heat was a sign from the ancestors: a warning of something, although no one volunteered what. The dreaded word on everyone’s lips is ‘drought.’ Memories of hunger and starvation are still very fresh in our minds although the hunger in our recent past was caused more by political mis-governance and negligence than by weather.

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Independent, Skeptic-Funded Study Confirms Global Warming is Real

dvice.com - October 30, 2011

            

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study has just released a summary of a recently completed global land warming analysis showing "reliable evidence of a rise in average world land temperature by approximately one degree Celsius since the mid-1950s." Yeah, we've heard that before, but this is one study that even skeptics may have to believe.

Here's why the Berkeley Earth Project is different from all previous studies on global warming:

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Polio Parallels

by Dr. Orin Levine - Executive Director, International Vaccine Access Center, Johns Hopkins University - huffingtonpost.com - October 27, 2011

Last week in Seattle, Bill Gates announced breakthrough results from a large malaria vaccine trial. The study, conducted in seven sub-Saharan African countries, showed that the most advanced malaria vaccine -- called RTS,S -- could cut the risk of malaria by as much as 56 percent among African children.

The results generated international buzz and raised the hopes that malaria, a disease that extracts a major toll in Africa and a handful of other countries, might be controllable through vaccination. What struck me most about this announcement is how it resembled -- and in some unfortunate ways, currently differs from -- the effort to develop a safe, effective polio vaccine as outlined by David Oshinsky in his award winning book, Polio: An American Story.

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Social Determinants Of Health Conference Releases Final Declaration

        

submitted by Mary Suzanne Kivlighan

Kaiser Family Foundation - October 24, 2011

The final document of the World Conference on Social Determinants of Health, which concluded last week in Rio de Janeiro, "calls for better governance for health and development, with transparent decision-making and social participation," and "[g]overnments are urged to develop policies and measure progress towards defined goals," Inter Press Service reports.

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Are we reaching "Peak Water"?

ww_7_small2.jpg

WASHINGTON, D.C. Oct. 18, 2011 — According to Dr. Peter Gleick and his colleagues in the newest volume of the most important assessment of global water challenges and solutions, more and more regions of the world, including the United States, may be reaching the point of "peak water." To conserve this critical resource without harming the economy or public health, businesses, communities, governments, and individuals are looking for new techniques to move to sustainable water management.

The World's Water, Vol. 7 offers discussion and analysis for developing those reforms. For more than a decade, this biennial report has provided key data and expert insights into freshwater issues. In the seventh volume in the series, Gleick and his colleagues at the Pacific Institute address such issues as increased conflicts over water resources, "fracking" natural gas contamination, corporate risks and responsibilities around water, and the growing risks of climate change. They specifically explore:

Does Adaptive Management of Natural Resources Enhance Resilience to Climate Change?

Emerging insights from adaptive and community-based resource management suggest that building resilience into both human and ecological systems is an effective way to cope with environmental change characterized by future surprises or unknowable risks. In this paper, originally published in Ecology and Society, authors Emma Tompkins argue that these emerging insights have implications for policies and strategies for responding to climate change. The authors review perspectives on collective action for natural resource management to inform understanding of climate response capacity. They demonstrate the importance of social learning, specifically in relation to the acceptance of strategies that build social and ecological resilience. Societies and communities dependent on natural resources need to enhance their capacity to adapt to the impacts of future climate change, particularly when such impacts could lie outside their experienced coping range. This argument is illustrated by an example of present-day collective action for community-based coastal management in Trinidad and Tobago.

U.S. Needs a National Disease Surveillance System

The Institute of Medicine urges HHS to create system that taps into electronic health records and patient-compiled data to help prevent and treat chronic heart and lung conditions.
By Neil Versel  InformationWeek

BBC: India "Close to Wiping Out Polio"

An Indian child gets an an-polio vaccine in January 2011

Although the polio vaccination program has suffered a serious setback in Pakistan and in other muslim countries following the CIA's fake vaccination program in Pakistan to confirm Osama Bin Laden's location, polio eradication efforts continue to progress in India with good results. 

For more information, go to:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-15425852

 

Strong Communities Are Necessary

by John McKnight
Co-Director of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute and Director of Community Studies of the Institute of Policy Researh, Northwestern University.


There is a new worldwide movement developing, made up of people with a different vision for their local communities. They know that movements are not organizations, institutions or systems. Movements have no CEO, central office, or plan. Instead, they happen when thousands and thousands of people discover together new possibilities for their lives. They have a calling. They are called. And together they call upon themselves.

In many nations local people have been called to come together to pursue a common calling. It would be a mistake to label that calling ABCD, or Community Building. Those are just names. They are inadequate words for groups of local people who have the courage to discover their own way—to create a culture made by their own vision. It is a handmade, homemade vision. And, wherever we look, it is a culture that starts the same way:

First, we see what we have—individually, as neighbors and in this place of ours.

Cheap Power: An Overnight Revolution (Also Documentary Introduction Video - 39:28)

by Mark Gibbs - networkworld.com - October 14, 2011

Every now and then along comes a technology that is revolutionary and changes everything. But a very few of these new technologies cause fast change. Mostly they seep out of the lab, into the arms of early adopters, and then ooze out into the world in general.

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Climate Change 'Grave Threat' to Security and Health

submitted by Nguyen Huu Ninh, friend of The Global Resilience System, lead author of 2007 IPCC report

by Richard Black - BBC News - October 17, 2011

                  

Food security was interwoven with the climate issue, speakers told the conference

Climate change poses "an immediate, growing and grave threat" to health and security around the world, according to an expert conference in London.

Officers in the UK military warned that the price of goods such as fuel is likely to rise as conflict provoked by climate change increases.

A statement from the meeting adds that humanitarian disasters will put more and more strain on military resources.

It asks governments to adopt ambitious targets for curbing greenhouse gases.

The annual UN climate conference opens in about six weeks' time, and the doctors, academics and military experts represented at the meeting (held in the British Medical Association's (BMA) headquarters) argue that developed and developing countries alike need to raise their game.

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Challenges Loom as World Population Hits 7 Billion

submitted by Samuel Bendett

by David Crary - Associated Press - October 17, 2011

She's a 40-year-old mother of eight, with a ninth child due soon. The family homestead in a Burundi village is too small to provide enough food, and three of the children have quit school for lack of money to pay required fees.

"I regret to have made all those children," says Godelive Ndageramiwe. "If I were to start over, I would only make two or three."

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RN Volunteer Opportunities for First Aid Support in Cities Across America

    nationalnursesunited.org - RN Response Network - October 13, 2011

As a past volunteer for the Registered Nurse Response Network (RNRN), we wish to thank you again for your desire to help people and communities in need.

Now we are asking for your help again, to join our first aid efforts in cities across the U.S. where Americans are rallying for real solutions to our national economic emergency.

You were there when we dispatched volunteers to assist with the recovery effort following a tsunami in South Asia, a hurricane on the Gulf Coast, Southern California wildfires, the earthquake in Haiti, and with contributions following this spring’s disaster in Japan.

RN volunteers have made a difference on each occasion, even when we have faced huge hurdles, including substantial governmental impediments, for example, to placing volunteers on the ground in Haiti. Yet on each occasion, RNRN did act, and sent as many volunteers as possible in these heroic humanitarian efforts.

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