big on love, tolerance, freedom and the human potential
If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world. – Bill Gates
Just published in the Internal Medicine Journal:
“…living for a prolonged period near high-voltage power lines may increase the risk of leukemia, lymphoma and related conditions later in life.
“Those who lived within 328 yards of a power line up to age 5 were five times more likely to develop cancer, while those who lived that close to a power line at any point during their first 15 years were three times more likely to develop cancer as an adult.”
The researchers at the University of Tasmania and Britain’s Bristol University point out that their review of a database of 850 patients is far from conclusive, but the usual studies have examined only short term exposure. [UP story]
“The cumulative effects of being exposed to many different pesticides over a lifetime represent an unquantified and unacceptable risk to all Canadian children.” – College of Family Physicians [link]
Municipalities across Canada are passing by-laws to restrict the use of cosmetic pesticides, [link].
Many pesticides may no longer be used for “enhancing the appearance of gardens and lawns as well as parks, recreational facilities and golf courses.”
By 2008, homeowners and landscape firms will face fines in 100s of cities.
The Supreme Court of Canada cites the internationally recognized ‘precautionary principle’ when cities and towns create rules to ban harmful pesticides in ‘order to promote health or reduce environmental risk’.
The Canadian Cancer Society, family and pediatric medical associations and local governments are steadily turning against common pesticides that have been “persuasively linked” to cancer, neurological impairment, and reproductive problems. [link]
This device was sold until the 1930s. It’s intended for family health and to prevent insanity and death.
Well into the 20th Century, attitudes and beliefs about masturbation were somewhat driven by psychiatrist William Acton’s 1857 text about our reproductive organs which remained popular for almost 20 years.
“His view of masturbating declared that a boy would become haggard, thin, antisocial, hypochondriacal, would lose his spontaneity and cheerfulness and would turn into a timid coward and liar. The final state was one of idiocy, epilepsy, paralysis and even death.”
MindHacks has the story of these long held links to madness.
Adding a snippet to the Plant Whisperer post, Steven Ley at the University of Cambridge has worked for 22 years to make a natural compound that stops predatory insects from feeding but will not harm bees or ladybugs, animals or people.
Azadirachtin is a highly active substance that inhibits the development of the larvae of a broad spectrum of destructive insects. Found on the neem tree in 1968, learning how to make the complicated molecule started in 1985. [story at Science blog]
Using plant extracts and powdered plant parts as insecticides started near the time of Roman Empire. When chemical insecticides appeared in the 1940s, problems also appeared such as environmental contamination, residues in food and increasing resistance. There is no doubt biological insecticides are a top choice for safe pest control, but only a few of the more than 250,000 plant species have been adequately evaluated.
The recent hurricane in the financial markets is blamed on mortgage loans to people unable to make their payments but is not blamed on people hiding these loans in Blue Ribbon packages while selling them offshore as top rated bonds.
I think the media failed miserably during the recent drop in global stock markets. Fear topped the headlines, editorials sent blame to all the wrong places, pundits invented diatribe that seldom identified the errors or the players.
Still details are lacking; we do not know the names or the divisions where our money has shrunk, but there are investigations underway in the offbalance sector of banks and financiers.
Banks and financial firms have two faces, core activity where activity is regulated and offsheet activity where activity is market driven – so-called free enterprise. Risk tolerance has been evolving in this area for several decades with most central regulators gradually inserting warning flags and balance sheet risk indicators rather than outright rules or constraints.
Ingenious packaging can make a quick fortune. Inventing financial products, not for the shopping center loan store but for the institutional trader, is one of the most promising careers on earth. The field is seldom discussed in public.
Here’s a column, Liar’s Loans, at the BBC written by Robert Peston that describes the architecture of this recent market bump and identifying a few companies involved, though none of the individuals. There’s nearly 150 comments after only a few hours, most yammering about greed and nonsense politics.
This pellet of solid ammonia borane is storing one half liter of hydrogen.
There’s hope for hydrogen vehicles but don’t hold your breath.
Only Minnesota, Vermont and Maine require drug companies to report payments to doctors for lectures, consulting, research and other services.
Big checks – more than $350,000 to a doctor on the committee that selects which drugs are used in Medicaid.
What’s going on in other states?
And in Washington? Don’t ask. [AP story]
Your toilet is a tattletale. Scientists say they can determine illicit drug use—from marijuana to heroin to cocaine—by sampling sewage.
The technique has been tried in at least 10 U.S. cities, ranging from towns with populations hovering around 17,000 people to medium-size cities of 600,000. Or as many as 30 cities including San Diego?
Flushing out human urinary biomarkers at Scientific American blog.
AP reports an entire community can be given a drug test using just a teaspoon of wastewater. Oregon will test at least 40 communities. The EPA has a program to evaluate legal drugs leaking into waterways. Drug enforcement agencies say little except that probes are not being used at households.
Here’s a chart showing the main contents of urine. It’s the most difficult component to remove from wastewater. Despite making up only 1 per cent of the volume of wastewater, urine contributes about 80 per cent of the nitrogen and 45 per cent of all the phosphate.
The news media has been largely silent, but Bill Moyers seems to be enjoying honesty and honor recently. And he’s showing me how wonderful it would be if true convictions were revealed more often.
“There’s a story about the medieval knight who returns to the castle after a long absence. He rides back through the gate with his helmet battered, his shield dented, his shield broken, and his horse limping. The master of the castle looks down from the parapet and shouts: “Sir Knight, what has happened to you?” And the knight looks up and says “Oh Sire, I’ve been up pillaging and plundering your enemies to the east and the west.” And the lord of the castle looks down at him and says, “But I have no enemies to the east and the west.” And the knight answers: “Now you do. Now you do.”
“And in a society where capitalism and corporations have more power than any other aggregation of human beings, the watchdog role of the business press, becomes as essential as the watchdogs to Washington. Where, then, does journalism stand as the future of our media world is being determined by such investment and the rapid development of business models to better target us primarily as consumers instead of citizens?
“…the oldest story in America – the struggle to determine whether “We, the People” is a political truth – one nation indivisible – or merely an economic arrangement masquerading as piety and manipulated by the powerful and privileged to sustain their own way of life at the expense of others.”
What Adam Said to Eve, by Bill Moyers
Malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever are increasing so rapidly that DDT is returning.
Malaria accounts for nearly 90 percent of all deaths from vector-borne disease globally. And it is surging in Africa, surpassing AIDS as the biggest killer of African children under age 5.
At least 80 percent of human infectious diseases are transmitted by bugs. More than 3,000 species of mosquitoes have been the worst of all the disease carriers.
But now DDT is not used to kill a mosquito but to keep it away, a so called non-contact repellent action of DDT.
When DDT sprayed on the walls of huts in Thailand, three out of every five test mosquitoes sensed the presence of DDT molecules and would not enter the huts. Many of those that did enter and made contact with DDT became irritated and quickly flew out.
“Indoor DDT spraying to control malaria in Africa is supported by the World Health Organization; the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; and the United States Agency for International Development.
“The remaining concern has been that the greater use of DDT in Africa would only lead mosquitoes to develop resistance to it. Decades ago, such resistance developed wherever DDT crop spraying was common. After the DDT bans went into effect in the United States and elsewhere, it continued to be used extensively for agriculture in Africa, and this exerted a powerful pressure on mosquitoes there to develop resistance. Although DDT is now prohibited for crop spraying in Africa, a few mosquito species there are still resistant to it.
“But DDT has other mechanisms of acting against mosquitoes beyond killing them. It also functions as a “spatial repellent,” keeping mosquitoes from entering areas where it has been sprayed, and as a “contact irritant,” making insects that come in contact with it so irritated they leave.
From Esquire 1971, Gordon Edwards is eating a tablespoon of DDT to show the safety of DDT.
In Mosquitoes, DDT, and Human Health, he describes the death and suffering caused by insect-borne diseases, and tells why we must bring back DDT.
From the NYTimes:
Until a suitable alternative is found, DDT remains the cheapest and most effective long-term malaria fighter we have.
Discover has a short article, 20 Things You Didn’t Know About… Mosquitoes.
#3 In 1998, researchers found a new mosquito species in the London Underground, descended from ancestors that flew in when the tunnels were dug 100 years ago. Once bird-feeders, they now feast on a menu of rats, mice, and people. They rarely interbreed with their aboveground colleagues. Their DNA actually varies from one subway line to another.
#6 It would take 1,200,000 mosquitoes, each sucking once, to completely drain the average human of blood.
Gen. David Petraeus will likely testify to Congress about progress in the war in Iraq on or about September 11.
The White House said the hearing date was not related to the anniversary of the 2001 attacks.
The announcement was made on Air Force One while President Bush headed to a summit in Canada.
…Bizarro ‘toon by Dan Piraro, via boxofthoughts
…story from Reuters aboard Air Force One
A new field of biology may be emerging to detect a plant’s early response to disease.
Plants emit a wide range of volatiles when they are infected with diseases or attacked by pests. It’s part of their defense mechanism and can attract useful predators and helpful parasites.
‘The Plant Whisperer’
Saber Miresmailli from UBC in Vancouver said,
“For better results in pest management, we should shift our attention from pests to plants because they can provide us with more accurate and reliable information about their health.
“We just need to learn how to translate their signals and understand them.”
He’s building a database of gases and volatile oils that are emitted from plants and plants under stress. His early worked showed that the volatile oil of rosemary stopped spider mites. Now he’s looking forward to a new system of sensors for pest management programs – an intelligent scouting machine. Early stage detection requires translating plant signals using olfaction sensors, an electronic nose, to follow chemical cues. [pdf]
Detecting plant volatiles at an early stage will prevent infestation from spreading and reduce the use of pesticides.
Surprising many, planting trees may not reduce airborne carbon.
To detect if trees deposited carbon in the soil, several projects enriched the air over forest canopy by spraying pure CO2 through laser drilled holes in tubing mounted on telescopic poles.
Duke University has been pumping extra CO2 over trees for ten years and found that forests may not absorb enough carbon to make a difference to global warming. “Elevated CO2 could significantly increase the production of foliage, but this would lead to only a very small increase in ecosystem carbon storage.”
In some areas, plant growth increased from 10-40 percent, but in most areas carbon was not moved from the air back to earth, the target of carbon reduction and sequestration efforts.
Carbon storage seems to occur only in the most robust and nutrient rich soils where biological activity is the most vigorous. Without paying attention to water and soils, conventional tree planting may not help reduce global warming. On average or marginal land, trees merely return the carbon dioxide to the air. Carbon will only be absorbed in a forest floor with a healthy and complex system of water, minerals, fungi and bacteria.
Oddly, invigorating soil with charcoal may produce healthy soil and thus absorb more CO2. As BioPact says, “When biochar is added to soils, they become impressively fertile because they prevent nutrients from getting washed away by rain and erosion.” I think the explanation for biochar benefits will go beyond erosion and soil mechanics. Carbon provides more than structure at the microscopic level and may interact with water and minerals as well as becoming a lattice for fungi.
Bioenergy.list is keeping abreast of soil’s ability to store carbon and the increasing attention given to charcoal as a zero-carbon biofuel.
The University of Hawaii energy program found that charcoal is a zero-carbon fuel and “the sustainable fuel replacement for coal“.
“Coal combustion is the most important contributor to climate change.
“Coal combustion adds about 220 lb of CO2 to the atmosphere for every million BTU of energy that it delivers; whereas crude oil adds 170 lb per million BTU, gasoline adds 161 lb per million BTU, and natural gas adds 130 lb of CO2 to the atmosphere per million BTU of delivered energy.
“On the other hand, the combustion of charcoal – sustainably produced from renewable biomass – adds no CO2 to the atmosphere! Thus, the replacement of coal by charcoal is among the most important steps we can take to ameliorate climate change.”
Subscribe here
