Canadian Lynx wallpaper

Canadian Lynx wallpaper

After “Top Kill” fails, what’s next

The new containment plan, scheduled to begin next week, is called the “Lower Marine Riser Package Cap (LMRP Cap).” It is a complex operation that will be carried out by remotely operated robots on the ocean floor, BP officials said — nearly one mile (1.6 kilometers) below the spot where the drilling rig exploded.

The robots, wielding cutting tools, will sever the bent riser pipe and replace it with the LMRP cap, BP officials say. The cap will then be connected to a riser leading to the drill ship Enterprise, nearly above the robots. Suttle said that even if LMRP works, it will only contain a majority of the oil and not all of it.

Cleveland Clinic research offers hope for development of a breast cancer vaccine

Dr. Vincent Tuohy’s research coud potentially lead to a vaccine to target and prevent cancer formation in women over 40 as well as high risk women. If findings from researchers at the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute continue to hold promise, women could one day get a routine immunization against breast cancer.

The reality of that happening is at least 10 years down the line. But the first steps toward that goal are encouraging.

Planting the Strip Between Sidewalk and Street

Eee Pad: AsusTek unveils Windows 7 tablet computer

Taiwan’s AsusTek Computer Inc. unveiled Monday a portable tablet computer that runs on Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system, joining a slew of manufacturers trying to tap demand for the sleek devices following Apple’s launch of the iPad.

Greek Windmills wallpaper, Local versus regional biodiversity

Greek Windmills wallpaper

The great pond experiment: Regional vs. local biodiversity

If a pond has enough nutrients, the pond community that emerges depends on the order in which species were introduced, says Chase, an ecologist at Washington University in St. Louis.

The discovery has broad implications for highly productive ecosystems such as tropical rainforests and coral reefs, and for attempts to restore these ecosystems.

Restoration can fail if the original ecosystem bears the imprint or memory of its past in ways that are not understood.

“This study is an important experimental confirmation of the influence of primary productivity on regional biodiversity,” says Alan Tessier, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research.

“The findings have broader relevance to the protection and restoration of biodiversity.”

Especially interesting for those that study biodiversity and restoration of ecosystems. As many may already know the U.S. has a no net loss of wetlands policy. A policy easier said than implemented. Much of the time we end up with something resembling a wetland, but is not a fully functioning replica of the wetlands it replaced.

Valence Technology Receives Orders to Power New Fleet of Environmentally-Friendly Hybrid School Buses

Valence Technology, a leading global energy system manufacturer, today announced it received new purchase orders from Enova Systems, Inc a leading supplier of hybrid and electric powered propulsion systems, to develop a new fleet of 16 hybrid-electric school buses intended for service in school districts across Wisconsin and Ohio.

Ready to turn on the AC? Check your Microsoft Hohm energy efficiency score first. They’ll probably show your state automatically via your IP address, but you can add your zip code or street address to narrow it down to see how the energy efficiency of your house compares with others in your state.

Bill Nye Explains How ‘Top Kill’ Oil Leak Plug Works (VIDEO). Or for a written explanation here, Behind the Special ‘Drilling Mud’ That Helps Clog the Oil Leak

The initial stories from BP about the success of the top kill were a little exaggerated. According to this story they will continue with the top kill attempt through Sunday. Not a complete failure, but not very much progress either. The engineers are evaluating the situation and making adjustments as they proceed. Plan B includes the placement of a second containment vessel over the leak.

Being told what to think about and how to perceive the BP Gulf spill,

From cable television, 24/7, we’re told that even if there’s nothing more Obama and his administration could do to stop the leak and contain the damage, he’s at fault because he’s just not feeling our pain. On MSNBC Friday morning I watched former Rep. David Bonior, last seen peddling John Edwards to Democrats, complain about Obama’s cool. “He’s got to get emotional,” the Democrat (who was there to balance the anti-Obama ranting of Pat Buchanan) insisted.

So Obama traveled to the Gulf today, to examine damaged beaches and wetlands, reassure the region, and emote a little. “I’m here to tell you that you’re not alone,” the president told Gulf residents. “You will not be abandoned. You will not be left behind.”

Will that be enough to stop the carping? Probably not. We’re a silly people sometimes. Let me amend that: Our Beltway opinion makers, the folks the great Digby named “the Villagers,” are a silly people. They want our president to be our daddy. They need Daddy to emote, to be a SNAP — a sensitive new age president.

If emotions and pain were all that was required to stop the leak, the pain being felt by the people up and down the Gulf coast would be plenty enough to stop it.

Polar bears face tipping point caused by global warming, Johnson & Johnson the BP of nonprescription drugs, Why Gulf spill is not Katrina redux

Polar Bear sleeping

Polar bears face ‘tipping point’

Climate change will trigger a dramatic and sudden decline in the number of polar bears, a new study has concluded.

The research is the first to directly model how changing climate will affect polar bear reproduction and survival.

Based on what is known of polar bear physiology, behaviour and ecology, it predicts pregnancy rates will fall and fewer bears will survive fasting during longer ice-free seasons.

These changes will happen suddenly as bears pass a ‘tipping point’.

The major populations of polar bears are in Canada and Russia. Within those are sub-populations – western versus eastern Canada for instance. If global warming continues at the current pace it is expected that those some of those populations will suffer declines. Some may disappear completely while others persist, but in much smaller numbers. male bears find female mates by tracking their prints in the snow. With thaws lasting most, and in the future,  maybe all year mating success is most likely to decline. That in combination with less ice for the bears to hunt from will negatively impact the total bear population. One positive impact of the BP Gulf spill is that drilling for oil in the Arctic has been put on hold, U.S. to suspend new exploratory oil drilling in the Arctic

Fearful of a disaster worse than the Gulf of Mexico spill, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar plans to postpone consideration of drilling off Alaska. New drilling was to have begun this summer.

…An administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not yet been made, said the decision is consistent with the White House’s desire to take a “cautious, science-based approach” for determining which areas of the Outer Continental Shelf off Alaska may be appropriate for oil production.

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline was shut down for at least two days ( that story may change with as news breaks) after there was a power outage after which thousands of gallons of crude spilled into a containment area.

Storm over J&J’s child drug recall only grows

Johnson & Johnson was blasted by lawmakers on Thursday for its massive recall of children’s medicines, as regulators said a string of recent manufacturing lapses could lead to civil or criminal charges.

Late last month, J&J recalled 40 widely used nonprescription products for children and infants, such as Tylenol and Motrin, after Food and Drug Administration inspectors found filthy equipment and contaminated ingredients at a Pennsylvania factory.

In addition to safety issues – in one instance J&J went out and bought large quantities of Motrin from local stores and tested them rather than issue a recall – is the effect on sales which ultimately trickles down to people’s jobs at J&J plants. There are plenty of acetaminophen (Tylenol) types products out there, as well as ibuprofen(Motrin) based pain killers/inflammation reducers. It’s the BP mentality that seems to run through so much of corporate America. Rather than thinking long-term and allowing for the possibility things can go wrong, they think short-term about saving pennies and cross their fingers about possible catastrophic consequences. More here – Tylenol recalls referred to FDA crime division

This news release was made about an hour before I did this post, BP: 48 hours before clear if mud stops oil leak

The chief executive of BP PLC says it will be about 48 hours before they know if pumping heavy mud into a blown-out well is successful in stopping the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

CEO Tony Hayward said on the CBS “Early Show” that his confidence level in the well-plugging bid remains at about 60 to 70%.

…The U.S. Geological Survey said three teams of scientists concluded that between 504,000 and 798,000 gallons a day had been billowing out of the mud a mile beneath the sea. Initial estimates were 210,000 gallons spilling per day. That means 18 million to 30 million gallons have spoiled the Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon blew up April 20, dwarfing the previous largest spill, from the tanker Exxon Valdez in 1989.

Having one of the worse man-made environmental disasters in history is not enough. Some are trying to milk some political traction out of it – Why BP is the Anti-Katrina

This conflates two very different things. Katrina was an example of the type of disaster that the federal government is specifically tasked with handling. And for most of the 90s, it was very good at handling them. But when George Bush became president and Joe Allbaugh became director of FEMA, everything changed. Allbaugh neither knew nor cared about disaster preparedness. For ideological reasons, FEMA was downsized and much of its work outsourced. When Allbaugh left after less than two years on the job, he was replaced by the hapless Michael Brown and the agency was downgraded and broken up yet again. By the time Katrina hit, the upper levels of FEMA were populated largely with political appointees with no disaster preparedness experience and the agency was simply not up to the job of dealing with a huge storm anymore.

The Deepwater Horizon explosion is almost the exact opposite. There is no federal expertise in capping oil blowouts. There is no federal agency tasked specifically with repairing broken well pipes.

Those trying to pin blame on Obama are in effect saying we  – tax payers – should spend billions on having a fully equipped government spill response team rather than make oil companies responsible. One of the tragedies off the Gulf spill is the whole thing could have been avoided if BP and many conservatives had not fought against back-up safety equipment that country’s like Britain and the Netherlands require.

U.S. Grid Can Handle More Renewables, Rain forests Add to U.S. Farm Income, Owachomo Bridge wallpaper

A new study and a nice coincidence to a post I did a couple days ago about the capacity of the U.S. power grid to handle renewable energy, Western U.S. Grid Can Handle More Renewables

More than a third of the electricity in the western United States could come from wind and solar power without installing significant amounts of backup power. And most of this expansion of renewable energy could be done without installing new interstate transmission lines, according to a new study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO.

We’re a long way from having 35% renewables as part of our total power consumption. That means we have plenty of time to upgrade the grid and its management software – both of which would be required regardless of how much of the country’s power comes from renewable. Much of the national grid is a legacy of WW II era planning. There have been improvements and up-grades over the years, but not the kind of widespread overhaul required for our energy needs and demographic shifts of the population.

Eat bacteria to boost brain power

In a classic test of learning ability, Matthews gave mice a treat – white bread with peanut butter – as a reward to encourage them to learn to run through a maze. When she laced the treat with a tiny bit of Mycobacterium vaccae, she found that the mice ran through the maze twice as fast as mice that were given plain peanut butter. This suggests that they had learned to navigate the maze faster, Matthews says.

The lead in to this piece asks if playing in the dirt can make you smarter. Mycobacterium vaccae is common in soil such as your yard or local park playground. Probably not a great idea to eat dirt since it can also contains various bacteria and heavy metals. That said those growing their own veggies or buying from a farmer’s market, even if you’re rinsing them thoroughly you’ll still get some traces of bacteria.

Report: Protect Rainforest, Add to U.S. Farm Income

A group of leading farm and forestry groups is calling on Congress and the administration to help end tropical deforestation. The groups are citing a new report showing overseas agriculture and logging operations are expanding production by cutting down rainforests – which floods the market with cheap commodities and undercuts American prices.

The report estimates that ending deforestation will boost revenue for U.S. producers between $196 billion and 4267 billion by 2030.

Probably not intended, but this makes it sound as though they’re saying take away the poor rain forest farmers income to increase ours. The problem with the continued slash and burn policies of South America – sometimes the government, but often times large influential corporations – is slash and burn is not a sustainable way to maintain the land for long term income or food. Rain forest soil will provide a couple years worth of crops without expensive fertilizers, than the soil nutrients are depleted. It would be better to keep the forest intact and harvest products for sale in a way that is sustainable. There have been various proposal put forth over the years including industrial countries paying for the oxygen and heat maintenance performed by the rain forests.

BP Attempts ‘Top Kill’ Method to Seal Oil Well in Gulf

BP officials emphasized that success was not guaranteed, and that the top kill could fail at any moment. But engineers and geologists following the effort, in which heavy fluids are injected into the well, said the likelihood of success grew with each passing hour.

“The operation is proceeding as we planned it,” said Tony Hayward, BP’s chief executive, in a statement Wednesday evening. “We will be continuing for at least another 24 hours.”

Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, said at a news conference Wednesday evening that it would be a day or more before it was clear whether the top kill had worked. “It’s too early to know if it’s going to be successful,” Mr. Suttles said.

As of the filing of that report 7,000 gallons of  special ‘kill mud’ has been pumped in so it is looking good so far. It may take as much as 50,000 barrels of mud from a 30,000 horsepower engine on a ship to complete the plug.

Owachomo Bridge wallpaper

Smoky Mountains National Park wallpaper, Trashanol Fuel Production Begins in Iowa, New York’s New Asphalt Plant To Pave Way To Greener Future

Footbridge at Smoky Mountains National Park wallpaper

Nation’s First ‘Trashanol’ Begins Production in Iowa

In a converted corn ethanol plant 25 minutes from Cedar Rapids, four-story tanks of renewable fuel are quietly bubbling away ready for conversion into fuel-grade ethanol later this week. What makes this fuel special is its main ingredient: instead of corn, Maryland-based Fiberight LLC, has found a way to turn one company’s organic waste into valuable renewable fuel.

…International Paper’s Cedar River mill produces 1 million tons per year of recycled paper for corrugated packaging, made from old corrugated containers (OCC). About 95 percent of OCC can be recycled into new paper, but the remaining unusable fiber goes into the mill’s waste stream. That adds up to about 50,000 tons of residual fiber waste each year. Previously, this residual fiber was sent to local agricultural companies for fertilizer, animal bedding and other land applications at a cost to International Paper.

Large scale efforts to make plant-based ethanols as replacement for fossil fuels has more minuses than pluses in the energy and emissions column, but niche fuels from corn and paper waste seem like a good idea.

Up and over in the northeast they be coming up with some good ideas too, New Asphalt Plant To Pave Wave To Greener Future, Mayor Says

Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled a new asphalt plant Monday that he says will pave the way to a greener future for the city.

Bloomberg says the new plant will allow for road and pothole repairs to be more efficient, less expensive, and more environmentally friendly.

…”New York City is actually the largest producer of recycled asphalt in the nation,” said Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. “We recycle 40 percent of the asphalt that goes into our streets. With this new plant, we’ll be able to up those numbers to 50 percent recycled asphalt.”

The new plant is expected to save the city about $5 million dollars a year.

If you thought Jaws was scary, Extinct giant shark nursery discovered in Panama

The six-foot-long babies of the world’s biggest shark species, Carcharocles megalodon, frolicked in the warm shallow waters of an ancient shark nursery in what is now Panama, report paleontologists working at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the University of Florida.

“Adult giant sharks, at 60-70 feet in length, faced few predators, but young sharks faced predation from larger sharks,” said Catalina Pimiento, visiting scientist at STRI and graduate student at the University of Florida. “As in several modern shark species, juvenile giant sharks probably spent this vulnerable stage of their lives in shallow water where food was plentiful and large predators had difficulty maneuvering.”

Of the 400 fossil shark teeth recovered 28 teeth were identified as C. megalodon. A basketball court is 95 feet long so a 114 ton C. megalodon would take up most of the court.

*BP Gulf Spill update: BP expects decision soon on attempt to stop oil – This is a Google-AP link and will thus disappear in a few weeks. According to this story, based on an interview BP did on this morning’s Today Show, BP leans toward trying the “top kill” junk shot by the end of the day. This method has never been tried at the depths of the Gulf spill so it’s a calculated gamble. Three results are possible. They stop the leak. The leak continues pretty much the same. Or it becomes worse.

Obama Administration to Announce Tougher New Regs for Offshore Drilling

Changes will be made to the way the government allows offshore drilling, the administration officials say, including new measures for the permitting process, new safety requirements for offshore rigs, and what was described as “strengthened” inspections for drilling operations.

SPECIAL REPORT-Civil fine in Gulf spill could be $4,300 a barrel

Just how many barrels of oil are gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon spill is a billion dollar question with implications that go beyond the environment. It could also help determine how much BP (BP.L) and others end up paying for the disaster.

A clause buried deep in the U.S. Clean Water Act may expose BP and others to civil fines that aren’t limited to any finite cap — unlike a $75 million limit on compensation for economic damages. The Act allows the government to seek civil penalties in court for every drop of oil that spills into U.S. navigable waters, including the area of BP’s leaking well.

As a result, the U.S. government could seek to fine BP or others up to $4,300 for every barrel leaked into the U.S. Gulf, according to legal experts and official documents.

…Under the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency can seek in federal court to fine any party whose negligence results in an oil spill in U.S. federal waters.

Other companies involved at the Horizon platform and the oilfield could share liability with BP, experts said. They include rig-owner Transocean Ltd (RIGN.S), cementing contractor Halliburton Co. (HAL.N), blowout preventer manufacturer Cameron (CAM.N), and Anadarko (APC.N) and Mitsui (8031.T), which also hold stakes in the oilfield.