Reuters
Damage to a gas cylinder caused a loud noise outside a reactor building at Japan’s quake-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant as rubble was being cleared away, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) said on Tuesday.
There was no change in radiation levels at the plant’s monitoring posts and no one was injured, Tokyo Electric officials told reporters.
“We found out that a heavy machine caught a gas cylinder in the rubble, like a crab uses its claw, and damaged the gas cylinder,” Tepco spokesman Junichi Matsumoto told a news conference.
Full article here
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
the Link Btwn Bat Deaths & Pesticides, May 31 2011
Tara GreenNatural News
The US Fish and Wildlife Service published a plan in May of 2011 to prevent the spread of white-nose syndrome (WNS) in bats. The fast-spreading disease has killed more than one million bats in the US and Canada since it detection in 2006. The new plan is meant to coordinate multiple governmental and research groups in a “swift national effort to avoid irreversible losses to bat populations”.
WNS derives its name from the whitish fungus which typically appears on the nose and/or wings of infected bats. However, not all infected bats display these visual symptoms. The disease causes bats to engage in atypical behaviors such as flying during periods when their prey is unavailable, such as sub-zero temperatures in daylight hours. Infected bats will also cluster around the entrances to their hibernacula (caves and other dark places in which they can safely spend the winter months). Once the disease attacks a colony of bats, it spreads quickly and typically wipes out 90% of those sharing a hibernation dwelling.
The highly respected journal Science published a study in August of 2010 in which researched predicted that WNS would result in local extinction of some bat species within two decades. Since bats play a vital role in ecosystems, both as pollinators and through their consumption of insects harmful to crops, this could have a devastating effect on the economy. The April 2011 issue of Science included an article reporting on another study looking at the financial impact of potential bat extinction. Researchers estimated that the loss of bat populations could cost the US agriculture system more than $3.7 billion per year.
Some scientists predict the bat die-off may require more extensive use of pesticides to compensate for fact that insects destructive to crops will no longer be subject to predation by the night-flying mammals. This is ironic because many environmental experts point to pesticides, along with GMO crops, as a possible culprit contributing to the epidemic threatening the continuation of the bat species. At the same time that one arm of the federal government, US Fish and Wildlife Management, works to contain the disease, other branches continue to rubberstamp their approval of an increasing number of pesticides and genetically modified Frankenfoods whose safety has not been verified.
Bats are one of the species serving as canaries in the coal mine of the toxic chemical stew in our environment. Their unique combination of long lifespan (up to three decades) and small size (a little brown bat weighs about 8 grams) makes them especially vulnerable. Boston University bat researcher and PhD candidate Marianne Moore notes, “That’s a lot of time to accumulate pesticides and contaminants. We know they are exposed to and accumulate organochlorines, mercury, arsenic, lead, dioxins but we don’t understand the effects.” Independent research, free of corporate influence, is needed to investigate the link between WNS and pesticides.
Sources for this article include:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-e…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/…
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/behind…
http://whitenosebats.wordpress.com/…
Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/032565_pesticides_bats.html#ixzz1NvLmix5B
The US Fish and Wildlife Service published a plan in May of 2011 to prevent the spread of white-nose syndrome (WNS) in bats. The fast-spreading disease has killed more than one million bats in the US and Canada since it detection in 2006. The new plan is meant to coordinate multiple governmental and research groups in a “swift national effort to avoid irreversible losses to bat populations”.
WNS derives its name from the whitish fungus which typically appears on the nose and/or wings of infected bats. However, not all infected bats display these visual symptoms. The disease causes bats to engage in atypical behaviors such as flying during periods when their prey is unavailable, such as sub-zero temperatures in daylight hours. Infected bats will also cluster around the entrances to their hibernacula (caves and other dark places in which they can safely spend the winter months). Once the disease attacks a colony of bats, it spreads quickly and typically wipes out 90% of those sharing a hibernation dwelling.
The highly respected journal Science published a study in August of 2010 in which researched predicted that WNS would result in local extinction of some bat species within two decades. Since bats play a vital role in ecosystems, both as pollinators and through their consumption of insects harmful to crops, this could have a devastating effect on the economy. The April 2011 issue of Science included an article reporting on another study looking at the financial impact of potential bat extinction. Researchers estimated that the loss of bat populations could cost the US agriculture system more than $3.7 billion per year.
Some scientists predict the bat die-off may require more extensive use of pesticides to compensate for fact that insects destructive to crops will no longer be subject to predation by the night-flying mammals. This is ironic because many environmental experts point to pesticides, along with GMO crops, as a possible culprit contributing to the epidemic threatening the continuation of the bat species. At the same time that one arm of the federal government, US Fish and Wildlife Management, works to contain the disease, other branches continue to rubberstamp their approval of an increasing number of pesticides and genetically modified Frankenfoods whose safety has not been verified.
Bats are one of the species serving as canaries in the coal mine of the toxic chemical stew in our environment. Their unique combination of long lifespan (up to three decades) and small size (a little brown bat weighs about 8 grams) makes them especially vulnerable. Boston University bat researcher and PhD candidate Marianne Moore notes, “That’s a lot of time to accumulate pesticides and contaminants. We know they are exposed to and accumulate organochlorines, mercury, arsenic, lead, dioxins but we don’t understand the effects.” Independent research, free of corporate influence, is needed to investigate the link between WNS and pesticides.
Sources for this article include:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-e…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/…
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/behind…
http://whitenosebats.wordpress.com/…
Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/032565_pesticides_bats.html#ixzz1NvLmix5B
Pro-Life Groups Call for Pepsi Boycott, May 30 2011
REBECCA MILLETTELife Site News
Scores of prolife groups are calling for a public boycott of food giant, PepsiCo, due to its partnership with Senomyx, a biotech company that uses aborted fetal cells in the research and development of artificial flavor enhancers.
LifeSiteNews previously reported on Senomyx’s partnership with major food corporations, most notably PepsiCo, Kraft Foods, and Nestlé.
Pro-life watchdog group, Children of God for Life (CGL), is now joined by major pro-life organizations calling upon the public to target PepsiCo in a boycott.
Pepsi is funding the research and development, and paying royalties to Senomyx, which uses HEK-293 (human embryonic kidney cells) to produce flavor enhancers for Pepsi beverages.
“Using isolated human taste receptors we created proprietary taste receptor-based assay systems that provide a biochemical or electronic readout when a flavor ingredient interacts with the receptor,” says the Senomyx website.
Full article here
Scores of prolife groups are calling for a public boycott of food giant, PepsiCo, due to its partnership with Senomyx, a biotech company that uses aborted fetal cells in the research and development of artificial flavor enhancers.
LifeSiteNews previously reported on Senomyx’s partnership with major food corporations, most notably PepsiCo, Kraft Foods, and Nestlé.
Pro-life watchdog group, Children of God for Life (CGL), is now joined by major pro-life organizations calling upon the public to target PepsiCo in a boycott.
Pepsi is funding the research and development, and paying royalties to Senomyx, which uses HEK-293 (human embryonic kidney cells) to produce flavor enhancers for Pepsi beverages.
“Using isolated human taste receptors we created proprietary taste receptor-based assay systems that provide a biochemical or electronic readout when a flavor ingredient interacts with the receptor,” says the Senomyx website.
Full article here
Iran Vows to Unplug Internet, May 30 2011
CHRISTOPHER RHOADS and FARNAZ FASSIHI
Wall St Journal
Iran is taking steps toward an aggressive new form of censorship: a so-called national Internet that could, in effect, disconnect Iranian cyberspace from the rest of the world.
The leadership in Iran sees the project as a way to end the fight for control of the Internet, according to observers of Iranian policy inside and outside the country. Iran, already among the most sophisticated nations in online censoring, also promotes its national Internet as a cost-saving measure for consumers and as a way to uphold Islamic moral codes.
In February, as pro-democracy protests spread rapidly across the Middle East and North Africa, Reza Bagheri Asl, director of the telecommunication ministry’s research institute, told an Iranian news agency that soon 60% of the nation’s homes and businesses would be on the new, internal network. Within two years it would extend to the entire country, he said.
The unusual initiative appears part of a broader effort to confront what the regime now considers a major threat: an online invasion of Western ideas, culture and influence, primarily originating from the U.S. In recent speeches, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top officials have called this emerging conflict the “soft war.”
Full article here
Wall St Journal
Iran is taking steps toward an aggressive new form of censorship: a so-called national Internet that could, in effect, disconnect Iranian cyberspace from the rest of the world.
The leadership in Iran sees the project as a way to end the fight for control of the Internet, according to observers of Iranian policy inside and outside the country. Iran, already among the most sophisticated nations in online censoring, also promotes its national Internet as a cost-saving measure for consumers and as a way to uphold Islamic moral codes.
In February, as pro-democracy protests spread rapidly across the Middle East and North Africa, Reza Bagheri Asl, director of the telecommunication ministry’s research institute, told an Iranian news agency that soon 60% of the nation’s homes and businesses would be on the new, internal network. Within two years it would extend to the entire country, he said.
The unusual initiative appears part of a broader effort to confront what the regime now considers a major threat: an online invasion of Western ideas, culture and influence, primarily originating from the U.S. In recent speeches, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top officials have called this emerging conflict the “soft war.”
Full article here
Mercury, PCBs Widespread in Sport Fish, May 30 2011
Tony Barboza,
Los Angeles Times
Nineteen percent of the coastline sampled by the state water board harbored fish with mercury in such high concentrations that they shouldn’t be eaten by young women and children.
Traces of mercury and PCBs are widespread in sport fish in California’s urban coastal waters, a survey released last week by the state water board found.
But 19% of the urban coastline sampled by researchers harbored fish with mercury in such high concentrations that they shouldn’t be eaten by young women and children. Fourteen percent of locations had similarly elevated levels of PCBs.
The findings, part of a two-year inquiry that is the largest statewide survey of contaminants in sport fish along the California coast, examined more than 2,000 fish from three dozen species gathered in 2009 from waters near Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego.
Full article here
Los Angeles Times
Nineteen percent of the coastline sampled by the state water board harbored fish with mercury in such high concentrations that they shouldn’t be eaten by young women and children.
Traces of mercury and PCBs are widespread in sport fish in California’s urban coastal waters, a survey released last week by the state water board found.
But 19% of the urban coastline sampled by researchers harbored fish with mercury in such high concentrations that they shouldn’t be eaten by young women and children. Fourteen percent of locations had similarly elevated levels of PCBs.
The findings, part of a two-year inquiry that is the largest statewide survey of contaminants in sport fish along the California coast, examined more than 2,000 fish from three dozen species gathered in 2009 from waters near Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego.
Full article here
Twitter Forced to Hand Over Personal Information, May 30 2011
UK Daily Mail
Twitter has been forced to hand over the details of users of its website in a landmark legal ruling.
The case was brought by a council seeking to uncover the identity of a blogger who criticised officials and councillors.
South Tyneside Council went to the U.S. courts to force Twitter to reveal the person behind the ‘Mr Monkey’ account.
The case could have widespread implications for users of the social networking site, and lead to a flood of actions by lawyers trying to find out the names of anonymous posters in order to sue them.
It could also have implications in the case of Ryan Giggs, whose lawyers have demanded Twitter reveal which users named him as the footballer with a privacy injunction over his affair with model Imogen Thomas.
Full article here
Twitter has been forced to hand over the details of users of its website in a landmark legal ruling.
The case was brought by a council seeking to uncover the identity of a blogger who criticised officials and councillors.
South Tyneside Council went to the U.S. courts to force Twitter to reveal the person behind the ‘Mr Monkey’ account.
The case could have widespread implications for users of the social networking site, and lead to a flood of actions by lawyers trying to find out the names of anonymous posters in order to sue them.
It could also have implications in the case of Ryan Giggs, whose lawyers have demanded Twitter reveal which users named him as the footballer with a privacy injunction over his affair with model Imogen Thomas.
Full article here
'Switch Off' and Think, May 30 2011
AFP
Like tens of millions of others, US technology writer Nicholas Carr found the lure of the worldwide web hard to resist — until he noticed it was getting harder and harder to concentrate.
He set out his concerns in a celebrated essay headlined “Is Google making us stupid?”
And his latest book “The Shallows” explores in depth what he fears the Internet is doing to our brains.
“The seductions of technology are hard to resist,” Carr acknowledges in that book, which has sold an estimated 50,000 hardback copies in the United States alone. But he thinks it’s time to start trying.
In a speech at last week’s Seoul Digital Forum and an interview with AFP, Carr restated his concerns that IT is affecting the way people think and feel and even the physical make-up of their brains.
Full article here
Like tens of millions of others, US technology writer Nicholas Carr found the lure of the worldwide web hard to resist — until he noticed it was getting harder and harder to concentrate.
He set out his concerns in a celebrated essay headlined “Is Google making us stupid?”
And his latest book “The Shallows” explores in depth what he fears the Internet is doing to our brains.
“The seductions of technology are hard to resist,” Carr acknowledges in that book, which has sold an estimated 50,000 hardback copies in the United States alone. But he thinks it’s time to start trying.
In a speech at last week’s Seoul Digital Forum and an interview with AFP, Carr restated his concerns that IT is affecting the way people think and feel and even the physical make-up of their brains.
Full article here
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