Friday Hope Blogging

Medicare has finalized new rules that affirm the right of hospital patients to choose their visitors:

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) today issued new rules for Medicare- and Medicaid-participating hospitals that protect patients’ right to choose their own visitors during a hospital stay, including a visitor who is a same-sex domestic partner.

“Basic human rights—such as your ability to choose your own support system in a time of need—must not be checked at the door of America’s hospitals,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “Today’s rules help give ‘full and equal’ rights to all of us to choose whom we want by our bedside when we are sick, and override any objection by a hospital or staffer who may disagree with us for any non-clinical reason.”

Arizona's racial profiling law may have cost it $45 million in convention business:

Spinoff effects bring economic losses into the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the study, commissioned by the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy group in Washington. Potential future effects of fewer convention bookings could mean Arizona will receive an overall hit of more than $750 million, the study said.

The British Beekeepers' Association will stop endorsing the use of pesticides that kill bees:

The British Beekeepers' Association has today announced plans to end its controversial practice of endorsing pesticides in return for cash from leading chemical manufacturers.

The endorsement of four products as "bee-friendly" in return for £17,500 a year caused outrage among many beekeepers because one of the companies, Bayer Crop Science, makes pesticides that are widely implicated in the deaths of honeybees worldwide.

In related news, the EPA will ban endosulfan:

Endosulfan is an antiquated, dangerous insecticide used on tomatoes, cotton and other crops that is a pervasive pollutant of waterways and a threat to numerous endangered species. It has also has been linked to endocrine disruption, reproductive disorders and other severe effects on human health. Conservationists, public health officials, farmworkers and indigenous groups have been calling for a U.S. ban on this DDT-era pesticide for years. Endosulfan is already banned in the European Union, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand and other countries.

In news related to the foregoing related news:

Research shows that the benefits of environmental regulations consistently exceed costs, in part because they end up costing far less than both industry and the EPA predict.

When EPA promulgates regulations, industry often expresses concern that the regulations will cause extreme economic hardship. Now this argument is being made regarding EPA regulation of carbon pollution using existing legal authorities like the Clean Air Act. In fact, there is extensive literature showing that the costs of environmental regulations are more than offset by a broad range of economic, public health and jobs-related benefits. Additionally, initial cost estimates are consistently found to be exaggerated.

Economists and researchers who have compared actual costs with initial projections report that regulations generally end up costing far less than the dire predictions from industry and even, as an RFF study shows, below cost projections by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Xerox claims to have saved $10.2 million by asking its employees for green business ideas:

One way to dismiss sustainability and any smidgen of corporate social responsibility is to shout the antiquated argument that we only have a choice between the economy and the environment. Xerox has shown that is not the case. Last year the company announced it was working on carbon neutrality; to that end, in the push to make the company more "green," Xerox encouraged its employees to share ideas on how the organization could become more efficient....

The results from employees’ rethinking: Xerox has saved US$10.2 million this year while it eliminated 2.6 million pounds of waste.

In California, new regulations require reformulation of household cleaning products:

About 2,000 household cleaning products will be reformulated to reduce smog-forming compounds under a new regulation adopted Thursday in California.

The rule will trigger a new, mandatory wave of “green” products, including window cleaners, general purpose cleaning sprays, degreasers, oven cleaners, metal polishes, furniture sprays, heavy-duty hand soaps and spot removers.

Household cleaners, which contain highly reactive solvents known as VOCs, or volatile organic compounds, are a substantial source of smog. The new standards will reduce emissions by nearly 7 tons per day, which is the equivalent of removing half a million cars from California’s roads.

The Pentagon will stop shielding certain consultants from disclosure laws:

The Pentagon has dropped its attempt to shield some consultants from public scrutiny and will require all retired admirals and generals it hires under its "senior mentors" program to disclose their employers, earnings and stocks they own.

Under pressure from Congress, the Pentagon had required that only consultants making more than $119,553 per year disclose their finances.

But in a memo Friday, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn said the disclosure rules will apply to all mentors.

Indonesia has created a large shark sanctuary:

A shark sanctuary has been declared around the Raja Ampat islands in Indonesia. Larger than Denmark, the new sanctuary covers 17,760 square miles (46,000 square kilometers) of one of the world's richest marine biodiverse region, the Coral Triangle. Protections not only cover sharks, but dugongs, marine turtles, mobulas, and manta rays as well. In addition, reef bombing and fishing for the aquarium trade are banned.

Researchers have found several new frogs in Colombia:

The newly discovered species include a cryptic beaked toad (Rhinella species), which resembles dead leaves and whose offspring skip the tadpole stage to develop directly into toadlets; an unknown toad with bright red eyes; and a new rocket frog (Silverstoneia species), a type of poison dart frog.

Photo: Robin Moore/iLCP

South Africa is deploying its military to stop rhino poaching:

Rhino poaching keeps taking on such alarming proportions in South Africa that the country's defence force has now been called in to help fight the ruthless killers who are mostly using assault weapons and often other sophisticated equipment to carry out their crime.

The request has come from South African National Parks (SANParks), which has been engaged in its own growing battle to stem rhino poaching in Kruger National Park, the country's flagship reserve that is home to about 10,000 white rhinos and 350 black rhinos.

Researchers in Hong Kong have created a solar air conditioning system for cars:

The system consists of a roof-mounted photovoltaic panel that collects solar energy and stories it in a custom battery supported by an optimized control system. The power collected will then be able to support a stand-alone electric air-conditioner, which can be switched on when the vehicle engine is not running. If the weather is dark, then stored energy can be used to power the system.

Currently the system can only produce enough power to sustain a standalone electric air conditioner, but the researchers are currently working on other projects that can benefit from the system, such as implementing them on the streets of Hong Kong to power shop A/C units and refrigerators.

Cheryl alerts me to these heartening Nunn-Lugar statistics:

The Nunn-Lugar scorecard now totals 7,599 strategic nuclear warheads deactivated, 791 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) destroyed, 498 ICBM silos eliminated, 180 ICBM mobile launchers destroyed, 651 submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) eliminated, 492 SLBM launchers eliminated, 32 nuclear submarines capable of launching ballistic missiles destroyed, 155 bomber eliminated, 906 nuclear air-to-surface missiles (ASMs) destroyed, 194 nuclear test tunnels eliminated, 493 nuclear weapons transport train shipments secured, upgraded security at 24 nuclear weapons storage sites, built and equipped 20 biological monitoring stations, and neutralized 1569.5 metric tons of Russian & Albanian chemical weapons agent. Perhaps most importantly, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus are nuclear weapons free as a result of cooperative efforts under the Nunn-Lugar program. Those countries were the third, fourth and eighth largest nuclear weapons powers in the world.

Apropos of which:

Enough plutonium and uranium to make 775 nuclear weapons has been removed from the BN-350 fast reactor in Kazakhstan, built to breed plutonium for the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons program, and placed in a secure storage facility to keep terrorists from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The United States and Kazakhstan worked together to achieve the transfer, which was announced today by U.S. and Kazakh officials at the storage facility in Eastern Kazakhstan.

"Working closely together, we secured, packaged and removed the spent fuel that contains 10 metric tons of highly enriched uranium and three metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium, enough material for 775 nuclear weapons," said Anne Harrington, deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation with the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, NNSA.

Kentucky has canceled plans to build a coal plant:

Thanks to a powerful and growing New Power grassroots movement, a broad alliance of Kentucky activists sent an electrifying message across the nation today: A just transition to a clean energy future, even in the heartland of coal country Kentucky, is possible.

Recognizing the spiraling costs of coal-fired plant construction and more practical energy efficiency and renewable energy options, the East Kentucky Power Cooperative (EKPC) has agreed to halt its once fervent plans to construct two coal-burning power plants in Clark County.

I heartily endorse this event and/or product:

House Democrats are exploiting an embarrassing moment for the GOP earlier this week to highlight the hypocrisy of Republicans' relentless opposition to health care reform.

Four members -- Joe Crowley (NY), Linda Sanchez (CA), Donna Edwards (MD), and Tim Ryan (OH) -- are rounding up signatures for a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Speaker-to-be John Boehner, encouraging them to press their members to refuse their federal health benefits based on the same principles underlying their opposition to health care reform.

Sixteen studies from vegetable locomotion (1975). Eight films by Alexander Kluge. Seven hours of a train ride through Norway. Three abandoned churches. And an unspecified number of photos by Clarence John Laughlin:


Celestial mechanics. Vintage coupons. Calling the time lady. "The picturesque dress of the Newhaven fish-women will not escape the notice of a stranger." Graphic Presentation (via things). Neverends. Molecular animation (via Peacay). Photos by Abelardo Morell. Photos by David Vestal (via wood s lot). And home from above:


Redrawing our borders. Related: John Wesley Powell's watershed maps. The bright lights of the big city. The unified lunar control network. And strange images from the Nottingham Caves Survey:


Here's a cartoon, too:



(Image at top: "The small object featured in this exhibition is the oldest surviving Anglo-American star map. It was made in 1780 by Simeon De Witt, a surveyor for George Washington and the Continental army. The map shows the stars visible from De Witt’s post in New Jersey. Drawing such a map, as De Witt himself later said, fostered an appreciation of 'the ever shifting scenery of the skies and all the gorgeous drapery of heaven.'")

Friday Hope Blogging

A North Carolina jury has found the anti-choice radical Flip Benham guilty of stalking doctors:

The director of a conservative Christian group was found guilty Monday of stalking N.C. doctors who perform abortions.

Rev. Flip Benham was sentenced in Mecklenburg court to two years probation and plans to appeal the decision, WSOC-TV reported. Benham, director of Operation Save America, which opposes abortion, homosexuality and Islamic violence, was accused of posting Wild West-style "Wanted" posters with the doctors' names and home addresses.

According to a recent study, lesbian households have an enviably low child-abuse rate:

The U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS) just released its results on its 24-year long study on families with lesbian parents, finding that not one of the 78 adolescents in the study had reported being sexually or physically abused by their parents. This compares to 26% of American adolescents overall who report parent or caregiver physical abuse. 8.3% report sexual abuse.

Additionally, only 2.8% of the adolescents in the study identified themselves as gay. Apparently the majority of them didn’t catch their parents’ gayness.

Caterpillar has suspended sales of D9 bulldozers to Israel:

The Israeli press is reporting that Caterpillar is withholding the delivery of tens of D9 bulldozers—valued at $50 million—to the Israeli military. These are weaponized bulldozers that are used to illegally destroy homes and orchards of Palestinian families.

(h/t: Karin)

A federal judge has ruled against warrantless cellphone tracking:

The court reached this conclusion both because cell tracking reveals information about constitutionally protected spaces such as the home, and because the prolonged nature of such surveillance is very invasive. The court likened the records sought by the government to “a continuous reality TV show, exposing two months’ worth of a person’s movements, activities, and associations in relentless detail.”

San Francisco has formally enacted the country's first open data law:

One year ago, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order directing the city’s departments to make their data public. Yesterday, the city’s board of supervisors turned that order into law. As far as we could establish, this is the first time any city in the U.S. has implemented an open data law....

In the year since Newsom opened the data treasure troves, 200 sets of data have been released, and at least 50 apps have been built using them. Among the apps: EcoFinder, which helps people find recycling locations for all sorts of odds and ends; SpotCrime, which plots crime incidents and sends alerts to residents; and, possibly the favorite of the city's transportation-beleaguered residents, Routesy, which lets people plan tips on public transportation and provides real-time information about when the next bus or train is coming.

A new study suggests that organic strawberry farms produce better crops than conventional farms:

Strawberries from the conventional and organic farms had similar levels of minerals such as potassium, phosphorous and calcium. However, organically grown berries had higher levels of antioxidants and polyphenols, nutrients linked to preventing cancer. They also had higher dry weight, or “more berry in the berry,” said Reganold.

Arizona Public Service Co. may shut down part of the Four Corners power plant:

The Environmental Protection Agency last month unveiled a proposal for environmental upgrades at the plant to improve air quality in the region, and APS officials estimated they would cost about $1 billion.

Rather than pay for all that work at the five-generator power plant, APS proposes closing the first three generators, which it owns, and buying Southern California Edison out of its share of units 4 and 5, which don't need as much investment to meet EPA standards.

PNC Bank will stop funding mountaintop removal mining:

“This move makes PNC bank number seven to issue a position on MTR,” the Rainforest Action Network’s Amanda Starbuck writes, “following in the footsteps of Bank of America, Citi, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Credit Suisse.” PNC’s decision leaves UBS and GE Capital the only major banks that support mountaintop removal.

Italy is launching the world's first solar motorway:

Road testing is due in November, while on 1st January 2011 the Catania-Siracusa motorway will open to the public. By then, 100 percent of its electricity needs will be met by the PV panels installed along the road: 80 thousand of them. Lights, tunnel fans, road signs, emergency telephones, all the services and street furniture installed on the A18 will be run with solar power: distributed over a surface of 20 hectares, the photovoltaic array was obtained through the construction of 3 artificial tunnels on a 100m wide, 2.8km long stretch of road, a project with an overall cost of €60 million. Annual solar electricity production is estimated at about 12 million kWh, which will save — constructors claim — the equivalent of around 31 thousand tons of oil and 10 thousand tons worth of CO2 emissions every year.

An interesting new lightbulb will allegedly be available in 2011:

The 10,000-hour, mercury-free ESL bulb is purportedly just as energy-efficient as both LEDs and CFLs — and it’s dimmable. Vu1 claims that its bulb can disposed of without worrying about toxic elements, and it produces 50% less heat than incandescents to boot.

Doctors have restored a man's vision with an electronic chip:

A man left blind by a devastating eye disease has been able to read letters, tell the time and identify a cup and saucer on a table after surgeons fitted him with an electronic chip to restore his vision.

(h/t: Karin again)

A group of scientists has launched a massive effort to catalog and preserve old scientific data:

Old records have more than proved their worth by now. Data from ships’ logbooks, for example, have been used to study the history of whaling, climate change and the planet’s magnetic field. Zooniverse—which in the past has harnessed the power of bored people with computers to search through pictures of the sky for supernovae and cosmic mergers—has unleashed their horde of citizen scientists on record books from Royal Navy vessels from World War I to gather data and improve a database of weather extremes.

Coffee can archaeology. Map art by Fernando Vicente. Photos by Agustín Casasola (via wood s lot).


Colonial Film (via The Bioscope). Mollusca. Phonebook carvings. The Oya stone museum. And a visit to a nuclear reactor.


And selected short subjects.





(Photo at top: "Last week, NASA's robotic EPOXI spacecraft whizzed past Comet 103P/Hartley, also known as Comet Hartley 2, and recorded images and data that are both strange and fascinating. EPOXI was near its closest approach -- about 700 kilometers away -- when it snapped the above picture")

Friday Hope Blogging

According to the Global Gender Gap Index, the United States actually made a little progress toward gender equality in 2009:

The world is moving toward greater equality between men and women, with Iceland keeping its lead in a ranking of 134 nations and the U.S. climbing into the top 20, according to a report by the World Economic Forum.

The U.S. rose to No. 19 -- jumping 12 positions -- in part because women now hold 33 percent of leading jobs in the administration of President Barack Obama, compared with 24 percent in 2009, the report showed. Still, the country ranked 40th in political empowerment, with Iceland claiming the top spot.

The European Court on Human Rights has fined Russia for banning gay pride parades in Moscow:

The European Court of Human Rights has fined Russia for banning gay parades in Moscow, in an important victory for the country's gay community.

A leading activist, Nikolai Alexeyev, brought the case after the city authorities repeatedly rejected his requests to organise marches....

"This is a crippling blow to Russian homophobia on all accounts," Mr Alexeyev said after the verdict was announced.

In related news, let's hear it for gay embryos!

It looks as though the United States has finally scrapped its plans for an "invisible" border fence:

The Department of Homeland Security, apparently ready to cut its losses on a so-called invisible fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, has decided not to exercise a one-year option for Boeing to continue work on the troubled multibillion-dollar plan involving high-tech cameras, radar and vibration sensors.

The USGS has drastically lowered its estimate of Alaska's NPRA oil reserves:

The National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA) is a piece of land owned by the United States federal government located west of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). While it gets less press than ANWR, it is another target of the "drill baby drill!" crowd. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has just released a revised estimate on the amount of "undiscovered" oil and gas that is likely to be found in the area, and let's just say that it is a cold shower for fans of more drilling in Alaska....

Considering that the world consumption of oil has been hovering around 85 million barrels per day, and the U.S. represents about a quarter of that, there's only enough oil in NPRA to fuel the world for about 10-12 days, or the US for about 45 days.

Drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation is on hold, temporarily:

Governor Rendell declared the Marcellus Shale tax dead for 2010 last week, due to Republicans being assholes who wouldn’t agree to anything higher than a 1.5% tax. One-point-five percent. Jesus. That’s what we get for subjecting our state to fracking and the threat of erupting natural gas wells?

Anyway, the Governor today decided that if we’re not taxing it, they’re not drilling it, so he signed an executive order at Penn Treaty Park today halting new drilling in Marcellus Shale formation in Pennsylvania.

(h/t: Karin.)

Geothermal energy is expected to grow 78 percent by 2015:

According to ABS Energy's research, only 10 projects, totaling 405-megawatts, were commissioned in 2009. The geothermal power projects were located in the United States (181 MW), Indonesia (137 MW), Turkey (47 MW), and Italy (40 MW). The report states the requirement of high up-front investment along with high risk associated with developing geothermal projects as the chief catalysts for the tough year.

Nevertheless, the Geothermal Report says the overall outlook for the geothermal industry is positive. ABS Energy expects the global geothermal market to increase 78% between 2010 and 2015; this would bring global capacity to 19,016 MW.

England may use its old waterwheels to generate power:

[O]ver the next ten years, thousands of homes and communities will be encouraged to restore dilapidated water wheels and mills – or build small-scale hydro-electric power plants as part of a drive for green energy.

According to Climate Change Minister Greg Barker, our rivers and streams are ‘a great untapped source of power’ and could generate as much electricity as a nuclear power station.

A federal judge has ruled that the US Army must inform residents of Oahu's Makua Valley about the environmental effects of its live-fire training:

U.S. District Chief Judge Susan Oki Mollway ruled that the Army failed to give the community crucial information on how military training at Makua Military Reservation on the island of Oahu could damage Native Hawaiian cultural sites and contaminate marine resources on which area residents rely for subsistence.

Palestine and Israel have both signed a cooperative agreeement on climate change:

Israel and the Palestinian Authority are among 15 Mediterranean nations who have just signed a historic agreement to work together to combat the effects of climate change, one month ahead of the next United Nations conference on climate change, meeting at Cancun in November....

Both Israel and Palestine are acutely aware of their vulnerability to climate change, which is expected to make water resources even more scarce for what is already the most water-stressed highly populated area in the world.

Sierra Leone has withdrawn its flag of convenience for fishing vessels:

Sierra Leone is closing its international shipping registry to foreign-owned fishing vessels in a move intended to reduce illegal catches in its seas and around the world, the fisheries minister said on Thursday.

Officials said the West African country -- notorious as a so-called "flag of convenience" with minimum enforcement of maritime regulations -- was the first such nation in the world to implement the measure.

Palau has established a huge new marine sanctuary:

Dolphins, whales, and dugongs will be safe from hunting in the waters surrounding the Pacific nation of Palau. At the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan, Palau's Minister of the Environment, Natural Resources and Tourism, Harry Fritz, announced the establishment of a marine mammal sanctuary covering over 230,000 square miles (600,000 square kilometers) of the nation's waters, an area the size of Ukraine....

"Palau, which once supported the Japanese position on commercial whaling, now supports conserving marine mammals, along with sharks and other species. By aiding economic development through ecotourism, Palau recognizes the importance of keeping these species alive and thriving," Dr. Susan Lieberman, director of international policy for the Pew Environment Group, said in a statement, adding that "we call on other countries large and small to follow Palau's example."

Worldwide cases of polio are dropping:

The world's largest, most intractable source of polio may be on the brink of elimination. In India the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have produced more polio cases this decade—nearly 5,000—than any other location worldwide that has an active immunization campaign. Nigeria saw a handful more cases than the two Indian states because it effectively ceased immunizing in 2003 for a time due to false fears of the vaccine.

Now, even at the peak of polio season, new cases in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and indeed all of India hover near zero—unprecedented, historic lows.

No Tech Magazine directs our attention to a modest proposal for a value extracted tax:

In our society, high taxes on labor drive businesses to minimize the number of employees. Resources remain untaxed, so we use them unconstrained. This system causes both unemployment and scarcity of resources.

Eckart Wintzen (1939-2008) proposed a system change called Value Extracted Tax. VET brings tax on resources up and tax on labor down. This creates an incentive to use abundant and recycled materials. Lower taxes on labor make services more affordable. Every sector requiring manpower, craftsmanship and creativity will benefit from lower labor costs.

Russia has donated copies of ten American silent films to the Library of Congress, none of which are in US archives:

Russia tended to keep the films that were sent to it for distribution, whereas American studios all too often disposed of their silent features once they no longer had any commercial value. The Library of Congress is negotiating not only with Russia but with archives in France, Czechoslovakia and the Netherlands, so we can look forward to many more such happy homecomings.

Also, luminous Orientalism. Bird photos by Gerry Sibell. Animated mechanisms. Anaglyphic stereoviews. And via wood s lot, the Dutch Nationaal Archief:


For sale: One 70-ton map, used only on Sundays. Metro maps and salt paper prints. Microphotography and the pigeon post. Vintage linen postcards. And collages by Kiyoshi Yamashita.


Jenny Odell's Satellite Collection (via things). A free and frank exchange of views with a tea-partier. More matchbox labels. And various subjects from the material world:


That's about as much as I can manage today, except for this:



(Photo at top: "Niagara Falls" by Hugh Lee Pattinson, 1840. Via Luminous Lint.)

Friday Hope Blogging

The United States is dismantling its remaining B-53s:

Outside of the nuclear weapons communities, little notice was paid last week to the announcement that authorization had finally come through to begin dismantling the last of the minivan-size B-53s, the most powerful thermonuclear bombs ever deployed in the active U.S. stockpile.

A terror weapon if there ever was one, the 10,000-pound B-53 was designed to deliver an explosion of nine megatons. That is the equivalent of 9 million pounds of TNT, or 600 times the power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

(h/t: Cheryl.)

An Israeli company is creating a solar generator with 72-percent conversion efficiency:

The difference between the new 3rd generation generators and the 2nd generation generators is that the new model is a combined heat and power, concentrated PV and solar thermal system. What this means is that not only does the system convert solar energy into electricity, it also converts any heat captured in the mirror collectors into electrical and thermal power.

I'm fairly impressed by the appearance of this Dutch waste-to-power plant:

The plant will use the latest and most efficient techniques to process 260,000 to 350,000 tons of waste per year. In turn, this will generate enough electricity for 60,000 households each year....

[Erick] Van Egeraat’s design of the plant makes the incinerator not just a power station, but also an icon on the horizon. Circular openings in the building’s aluminum facade serve to transform the station into a beacon at night, when light from the facility shines through the exterior.

Not just that, but the design allows the light to start as a spark before growing into a ‘flame’ that covers the entire building, before transforming into ‘embers’. Quite a design feat for an incinerator.

To put it another way, Erick van Egeraat is the Albert Speer of envirofascism! Give that idea to a roomful of speedfreak monkeys with typewriters, and you'd have an article by Jonah Goldberg within the hour.

Argentina has created a new law to protect its glaciers:

The law...prohibits the release, dispersal or disposal of substances or contaminants, chemicals or waste of any kind or size in glaciers and periglacial environments. It also prohibited the exploration and explotaition of mines.

Telementoring could help surgeons in remote areas to perform more complex operations:

Telementoring may be an effective way for subspecialist surgeons to assist remotely located general surgeons in the care of patients in need of emergency subspecialty surgical procedures, according to new research findings published in the September issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons....

In a civilian setting, telementoring could have wide-ranging applications for general surgeons in rural medical centers where they must treat a wide range of conditions, often without the breadth of subspecialty expertise needed for all cases.

The word on the street is, you can keep dung out of your drinking water by constructing a vertico-horizontal lattice of crosslinked metallic or xyloid palings characterized by a periodic pattern of spatially homogeneous, gas-permeable interstices. If correct, this would force us to reconsider the basic assumptions of Crosby and Andrews (1944):

Simply fencing off streams and drainage ditches so farm animals can't deposit manure in and around them could cut levels of faecal pollution dramatically, according to scientists. This would protect the health of people exposed to river water and help Britain comply with EU rules on water quality.

It might be worth a shot, I suppose. In related news, a new study in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry says stop running with scissors, or you'll put your eye out.

The moon may be capable of supporting golf courses:

[A]fter a year of analysis NASA today announced that its LCROSS lunar-impact probe mission found up to a billion gallons of water ice in the floor of a permanently-shadowed crater near the moon's south pole.

That's enough, said researchers, to fill 1,500 Olympic-size swimming pools, all from one crater.

Researchers have discovered a fish that dwells 1.75 leagues under the sea:

Fish were not expected to be able to survive so deep, but scientists have captured footage of a new species of a scavenger-hunting snailfish swimming at an astounding 7,000 meters below the surface. The video, taken from an 8,000 meter-deep sea trench in the Southeast Pacific Ocean, showed a level of biodiversity that surprised seasoned marine biologist, who have previously surveyed five other deep sea trenches.

"Our findings […] will prompt a rethink into marine populations at extreme depths," said Alan Jamieson from the University of Aberdeen's Oceanlab, who led the expedition.

A common virus could kill cancer cells:

By the age of five, most people have been exposed to the virus, called reovirus. For some, it can trigger brief episodes of coughing or diarrhea while many other don't develop any symptoms. The body simply overpowers the virus. But what scientists have discovered is that the virus grows like gangbusters inside tumor cells with a specific malfunction that leads to tumor growth. That finding led researchers to ask: Is it possible to use the virus as a treatment?

Amanda Udis-Kessler responds to Albert Mohler:

You describe yourself as a “Christian committed to biblical truth.” To prevent the Tyler Clementis of the world from jumping off bridges, you have to become a Christian as committed to human flourishing as you are to biblical truth – to walk the hard path of Jesus, not the easier one that the Pharisees are presented as following....

You ask in your open letter whether there is anyone who could have stood between that boy and that bridge. The answer is yes. There is exactly one person who could have stood between that boy and that bridge, and that person is you.

(Via Truth Wins Out.)

The New York Subway. Around the world in 65 photos. The tomb of Rudj-Ka. The tippling woodpecker. Kindergarten weaving. And the evolution of type.


De 78 rpm a 33 1/3 rpm. 20 cartazes de filmes B dos anos 1930. The Great White Silence. Views of Moscow from 500 feet. Water skeletons. A mosquito's heart. The Stock Project. And human-animal relations in photo postcards, 1905-1935.


:Photoschau, photomicrography and Polyorama. Globe poster specimens. The Crystal Palace. Activities for the afterlife. And paintings by Leah Fusco.


And a short film.



(Painting at top: "Raita" by Vilho Lampi, 1934. Via wood s lot.)

Friday Hope Blogging

A federal judge has ordered the U.S. military to stop enforcing DADT:

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips issued a worldwide injunction banning enforcement of the discriminatory and counterproductive policy known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT). Tuesday's order followed a September ruling by Judge Phillips that found DADT to be an unconstitutional violation of the due process and free speech rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual service members. In an article in Tuesday's New York Times, the newspaper called the decision a "significant milestone for gay rights in the United States."

Florida will not appeal the court ruling that overturned the state's ban on gay adoptions:

The Florida Department of Children and Families announced Tuesday evening that the state agency would not appeal the September decision by the 3rd District Court of Appeals.

"We had weighed an appeal to the Florida Supreme Court to achieve an ultimate certainty and finality for all parties," said Joe Follick, the department's communications director.

"But the depth, clarity and unanimity of the DCA opinion -- and that of Miami-Dade Judge Cindy Lederman's original circuit court decision -- has made it evident that an appeal would have a less than limited chance of a different outcome."

In related news, The Naib posts an interesting chart, and makes a good point:

The problem with the old angry white guy strategy is that old angry white guys are not going to be around for very much longer (especially not with the Republicans trying to privatize social security and Medicaid.) The republican party and old conservatives in general are making a devils bargain for short term gains that will not serve them well in the long run.

New research suggests that a bedrock assumption of evolutionary psychology may not be entirely accurate:

In a study to be published in the journal Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, Miller and her colleagues carried out their own version of Buss and Schmitt's work, asking how much time and money college students spent in a typical week pursuing short-, intermediate- or long-term relationships. The proportion of mating effort dedicated to short-term mating was the same for men and women. Similarly, both men and women showed an equivalent tendency to lower their standards for sex partners, and men did not report feeling constrained to have far fewer sexual partners than they truly desired.

Furthermore:

"In more equal actual roles, men and women have more similar mate preferences," Eagly says. "In very different marital roles that confine women to a domestic role, men and women choose differently."

A new type of anaerobic digestion reactor allegedly produces as much electricity as 25 wind turbines:

These reactors use a consortium of methanogenic (methane-producing) bacteria to degrade waste and energy crops to produce biogas (a mixture of methane and carbon) which is then converted to electricity using a turbine.

The DoI has approved the country's first solar tower:

The solar ‘power tower’ has been proposed for the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County, California by BrightSource Energy, and it will produce up to 370 megawatts of clean energy. This energy would be enough to power between 111,000 to 277,500 American homes, and the project will create over 1,000 jobs.

Inhabitat has more on the geothermal hotspot under West Virginia:

The discovery was made by the Southern Methodist University, who was given a $481,500 grant by Google to look into potential geothermal activity. The discovery is believed to be 78% more than was previously estimated....

In the official discovery report, the university said, “The presence of a large, baseload, carbon neutral and sustainable energy resource in West Virginia could make an important contribution to enhancing US energy security and for decreasing CO2 emissions"....

Currently, West Virginia produces 16,350 MW per annum from coal. If it was to fully utilize its geothermal reserves, it could produce 18,890 MW.

MIT researchers have created a portable desalination system for use in disaster areas:

The system is designed to be cost effective. It is made from standard parts such as PVC pipe and basic electronic components. It can be assembled and operated by local people who do not need advanced technical training. The units can also operate efficiently in a wide range of weather conditions. They have built in computers with sensors that can change certain variables if it gets cloudy. For example, the computer can adjust power going to the pump or the position of the valves to ensure the system will always produce water.

American ranchers are increasingly trying to coexist with wolves, instead of exterminating them:

[D]eterrence projects are slowly gaining favor with ranchers living in wolf country, and they reflect a new, more collaborative way of dealing with Mexican wolves, which the Fish and Wildlife Service reintroduced to Arizona and New Mexico in 1998....

About 15 ranchers in Arizona and about a dozen in New Mexico have tried wolf deterrent strategies over the past several years, and many of them -- particularly in Arizona, where grazing is for the most part seasonal instead of year-round -- have seen some benefit.

The rinderpest virus has apparently been eradicated:

Scientists have eradicated a killer virus in the wild, only the second time such a feat has been achieved in human history.

Researchers at the UN said today that rinderpest, a virus that causes devastating cattle plague, has been wiped out, the first time such an announcement has been made since the end of smallpox more than 30 years ago.

John Anderson, the head of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, called the success "the biggest achievement of veterinary history". Rinderpest is the first animal virus to be contained and then eradicated in the wild.

The Obama administration has proposed new regulations that would limit miners' exposure to coal dust:

Federal regulators want to cut the dust exposure limit in half over two years, under rules proposed by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.MSHA also would require mine operators for the first time to monitor and record dust levels in real time; require miners in the dustiest jobs to wear personal dust monitors; change sampling procedures to determine how well mines are complying with dust controls; and expand medical monitoring of miners.

Sixty French towns have returned to using horse-drawn carts for waste collection:

For Jean Baptiste, mayor of medieval Peyrestortes, near Perpignan and one of 60 towns now using horses to collect waste, the benefit above all is practical. "You can't turn a waste collection vehicle around here. We used to block streets to traffic and keep waste in open skips." He sold off a dustbin lorry and acquired two Breton carthorses instead. Asked whether the changes are saving money, he says: "It's too early. But money isn't the only reason. The exhaust smells have gone, the noise has gone, and instead we have the clip-clop of horses' hooves."

In other news: The 600th birthday of Prague's astronomical clock. Soviet magazine cartoons. The recovery of comet 164P/Christensen. LEGO letterpress. And cyanotypes by Anna Atkins.


45cat (via things). Trap rooms. The Hepcats Jive Talk Dictionary. Photos by Jonathan Kenyon. And the fine art of underwater pumpkin carving.


Vintage coffee tins. Photos by Justin Partyka (via wood s lot). Caspian dreams. Photos by Frans Erasmie. And Le Cochon Qui Rit.


And a short film.



(Painting at top: "Trace" by Gregory Thielker, 2008.)

Friday Hope Blogging

A right-wing Christian group has decided to stop funding an anti-gay event:

The group’s president, Alan Chambers, told CNN that the event has become too divisive [!!] and confrontational.

"All the recent attention to bullying helped us realize that we need to equip kids to live out biblical tolerance and grace while treating their neighbors as they'd like to be treated, whether they agree with them or not," Chambers told CNN on Wednesday.

That's one way of looking at it, I suppose. But it's not very muscular.

A couple of conservative activists are calling for an end to the death penalty:

From our conservative perspective, there are other reasons we oppose the death penalty. It is an expensive government program with the power to kill people. Conservatives don't trust the government is always capable, competent, or fair with far lighter tasks.

When it comes to life and death, mistakes are made, or perhaps worse, bad decisions are made. States have wrongly convicted people based on false confessions and inaccurate eyewitness identification. In some of these cases, the real perpetrator was identified decades after the crime occurred. Since DNA evidence is not available in the majority of murder cases, other wrongful convictions based on similar types of evidence may never come to light.

Perhaps we could extend this logic to "far lighter tasks" like bombing foreign capitals.

The FTC is working on new regulations to prevent greenwashing.

Among the proposed changes: Marketers shouldn't use labels like "green" or "eco-friendly" because they're too vague; if something's labeled as "biodegradable," then the entire package should "completely break down and return to nature" within a year; and if something's called "non-toxic" it should be non-toxic for humans and for the environment generally.

Public comments are welcome.

Zion National Park has completed the park system's first soundscape plan:

For the first time, soundscape measurement metrics that have been in development at the NPS Natural Sounds Program office in Ft. Collins, Colorado, will be driving forces in ongoing Park management and assessment procedures. One of these metrics is the “noise-free interval,” or average time between the audible presence of human sound. According to Frank Turina, an NPS Natural Sound Program planner, “Now it’s two to three minutes before you hear a human-caused sound, usually involving an overflight, and we want to expand that to a seven-minute period. If we meet that goal we will reassess the situation to see if a longer interval is warranted.”

While some environmental groups had pushed for the Park Service to set a higher standard for back country visitors, this first step, if successful, would effectively reduce sound intrusions to less than half their current level.

Chile has created a large marine preserve around a small island:

Today, the Chilean government announced the creation of a large marine reserve around tiny and remote Sala y Gómez island in the Pacific ocean. The Waitt Foundation, Oceana, and National Geographic mounted a March 2010 expedition to document marine diversity in waters surrounding the island. The government's move represents a more than 100-fold increase in the expanse of Chile's marine protected areas....

"Sala y Gómez is one of the last undisturbed and relatively pristine places left in the ocean," said Dr. Enric Sala, a marine ecologist and National Geographic Ocean Fellow. "The island and its surrounding ocean ecosystem, which includes deep seamounts with unique marine life, have global value. These seamounts are very vulnerable to fishing activities, and this inspirational step marks Chile's potential as a global leader in ocean conservation."

The DoE has agreed to a cleanup deadline at the horrendous Hanford site:

The decree gives DOE more time for important and difficult environmental cleanup work at Hanford but also requires DOE to answer directly to the court if it misses new deadlines. The consent decree represents the beginning of a new level of accountability for the federal government for Hanford nuclear reservation cleanup over the next 40 years, said Rob McKenna, Washington state attorney general, in a statement.

A court has overturned Ohio's ban on labels that identify rBGH-free products:

Earlier this week, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the state of Ohio's ban on labels that identify milk as rBST- or rBGH-free, meaning produced without the use of artificial bovine growth hormone. Consumer and organic food groups were jubilant at the Ohio news, which may have far-reaching repercussions not only for all milk, but for genetically engineered foods.

The White House will once again have solar panels:

Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the plans Tuesday in Washington at a conference of local, state, academic and nonprofit leaders aimed at identifying how the federal government can improve its environmental performance.

Former Presidents Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush both tapped the sun during their days in the White House. Carter in the late 1970s spent $30,000 on a solar water-heating system for West Wing offices. Bush's solar systems powered a maintenance building and some of the mansion, and heated water for the pool.

This means that Obama is the new Carter, which makes him wrong, just like Carter was when he installed solar panels, which had to be removed and incinerated at a cost of eleventy-point-three billion dollars by a highly trained cadre of Reagan-era freedom fighters, each of whom received 12 medals for risking life and limb to restore America's dignity on the world stage.

Some experts believe that Obama's panels are even worse than Carter's, because they remind The American People of turf-marking vandalism like graffiti and miscegenation. Carter's panels had a certain pathos, and were more like a weird-looking sweater on some sad, disoriented old man, according to Washington insiders.

And it only gets worse:

Yesterday, the Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar approved the nation's first-ever large-scale solar energy plants to be built on public lands. Both plants, located in California, are first in a series of clean energy projects under final review by the Department of Interior (DOI) that are to be built on public lands. The California projects will have access to 6,800 acres that could produce up to 754 megawatts, enough to power up to 566,000 typical homes.

America Held Hostage: Day One!

West Virginia seems to have a lot of geothermal power:

Researchers have uncovered the largest geothermal hot spot in the eastern United States. According to a unique collaboration between Google and academic geologists, West Virginia sits atop several hot patches of Earth, some as warm as 200˚C and as shallow as 5 kilometers. If engineers are able to tap the heat, the state could become a producer of green energy for the region.

Obama has repealed language in the Dodd-Frank bill that allowed the SEC to hide its records:

This broad and unnecessary language would have given the SEC the blanket authority to block the release of records in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and to withhold records in response to subpoenas filed by third-party civil litigants, even if such records were needed to expose corruption or incompetence at the agency.

The EPA is blocking 11 coal-mining permits in Kentucky:

It’s the first time in about 20 years the federal agency has made such a move in Kentucky, but it is similar to actions that it’s made in other Appalachian states, where regulators are complaining that the EPA is overstepping its bounds.

In objection letters about the permits from its Atlanta office to the Kentucky Division of Water, the EPA cited the state’s own assessment of poor water quality in the regions where the permits are sought. And it said state regulators, in moving to approve the permits, failed to conduct analyses to determine whether proposed discharges from new surface mining would likely violate state water quality standards.

During a 60-day expedition to Papua New Guinea, researchers found 200 new species:

Half of the new species were spiders, but the team also found two new mammals, nine new plants, two dozen frogs, and multitude of insects. Most surprising was the discovery of at least two species so unique that they are likely to be assigned their own genus.

Photo © Piotr Naskrecki/iLCP.

Researchers also found new coral reefs in the Mediterraean:

This area apparently stretches over a few kilometers, 700 meters under the surface and some 30-40 km off the coast of Tel Aviv. According to the researchers, this southeastern region of the Mediterranean has only sparse sea life and therefore the discovery is in fact parallel to discovering an oasis in the middle of an arid expanse. "We did not expect, know, or even imagine that we would come across these reefs and certainly not such large ones. It's like finding a flourishing oasis in the middle of the desert," said Dr. Yizhaq Makovsky, who directed the University of Haifa control center for the project.

Bank of America has halted foreclosure sales nationally:

Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America Corp., the nation's largest bank, said Friday it would stop sales of foreclosed homes in all 50 states as it reviews documents used to process foreclosures....

A document obtained last week by the Associated Press showed a Bank of America official acknowledging in a legal proceeding that she signed thousands of foreclosure documents a month and typically didn't read them. The official, Renee Hertzler, said in a February deposition that she signed 7,000 to 8,000 foreclosure documents a month.

Scotland may run on 100-percent renewable energy by 2025:

While many countries are complaining about the Copenhagen requirements, other countries are striving to go above and beyond the call of duty. Last week Northern Ireland stated that they were hoping to have 40 percent of the country running off renewable energy. This week, new First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond went even further, stating that the country could be running off of 100 percent renewable energy by 2025.

This ambitious goal happened a week after the SNP administration upped Scotland's renewable energy goal from 50 percent to 80 percent by 2020

(h/t: Karin.)

All too human landscapes in southwest Florida. Roadtown. An abandoned line of the Moscow Metro. Ptolemy's map of Germania, deciphered (via Cheryl). Newly discovered footage of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. And some striking images from North Korea:


The Urban Speaker. Some items relating to Heathrow Airport (via things). An exoskeleton for wheelchair users. The Adrspach-Teplice Rocks. Iceland digitized. Top discoveries by the Census of Marine Life. Typographic maps. And Mexico's Cave of Crystals:


Right-Wing Radio Duck. Apropos of which, right-wing icons and their neverending struggle against alien sociologists (via Peacay). "It's decorative gourd season, motherfuckers!" Work Hard and Starve. An audio letter from Ethiopia. And Io in true color:


Here's a movie, too.



(Image at top: "Desert Landscape" by Sidney Nolan.)