Tree and Climbing Vine wallpaper
From the United Kingdom, Bee decline could be down to chemical cocktail interfering with brains
A cocktail of chemicals from pesticides could be damaging the brains of British bees, according to scientists about to embark on a study into why the populations of the insects have dropped so rapidly in recent decades. By affecting the way bees’ brains work, the pesticides might be affecting the ability of bees to find food or communicate with others in their colonies.
…Insects such as bees, moths and hoverflies pollinate around a third of the agricultural crops grown around the world. If all of the UK’s insect pollinators were wiped out, the drop in crop production would cost the UK economy up to £440m a year, equivalent to around 13% of the UK’s income from farming.
Pollinators are also crucial for the quality of fruits and vegetables. Perfectly shaped strawberries, for example, are created only if every single ovary has been pollinated by an insect. And the number of seeds in a pumpkin depends on the number of species of insects that have pollinated the plants. “If you’ve got 10 pollinators, you’ll get more seeds in the pumpkin than you would have got if you’ve just got one pollinator,” said Giles Budge of the Food and Environment Research Agency. “It is important to have that diversity in a pollinating population.”
Three species of British bees have become extinct. While half the species remaining have declined in population by as much as 70%. Three quarters of butterflies, also important pollinators, have declined in population by three-quarters of their numbers since the 1970s.
Electronic spectacles coming to market soon
US company PixelOptics has invented electronic spectacles that can automatically change focus as you lower your head to read a book, and could spell the end of the bifocal.
America’s Broadband Dilemma – Can the FCC bring access to everyone in the country and achieve world-leading speeds at the same time? The point may be moot if they cannot bring down the monthly charge. $40 to $50 a month is a strain for many family budgets.
A judge, who coincidentally owns some oil company stock, recently ruled against the moratorium on new oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Legal issues aside the moratorium is a hardship for many Gulf Coast workers. Oil rig work is dangerous, but it does pay well. While many would like to see it lifted as soon as possible this story is a reminder why we should not, like the berm building, let emotions get in the way of taking a rational science based approach to any new oil rigs, New Details on Blowout Preventer
The rig’s “failsafe device,” which should have stopped the spill, was approved despite being vulnerable, a new report shows—and now BP estimates up to 100,000 barrels can be leaking each day.
In a riveting story, The New York Times reports that the so-called last resort for oil rigs, blowout preventers, may not be the failsafe that the oil companies pretend they are. A 2000 report found that a jam or leak in a single valve could shut down the entire preventer, and a 2001 study by Transocean, which operated the Deepwater Horizon rig, found a failure rate of 45 percent. More details from the shocking report below.
…The New York Times reports that, “As it turns out, records and interviews show, blind shear rams [a type of blowout preventer] can be surprisingly vulnerable.” The small pieces of equipment known by some as the “ultimate failsafe device” in fact had a history of mixed success and one Transocean study found that the blowout preventers had a 45 percent “failure rate,” and the entire device could be rendered useless by the failure of a single valve. “If that would’ve worked,” said one executive “that rig wouldn’t have burned up and sunk.”
…Even in an industry rife with poor regulation, BP, and the Deepwater Horizon in particular, stand out as unsafe and out-of-date. While the vast majority of oil rigs were outfitted with two blind shear rams according to changing industry standard, the Deepwater Horizon had just one which, like others, was susceptible to “single-point failure.” According to the Times, the decision to equip the Horizon with just one blowout preventer came after most other rigs under the contractor Transocean featured two, and it is unclear why the Deepwater Horizon failed to be updated.
• Cutting Corners
BP executives consistently and deliberately cut corners to save both time and money, reports show, directly resulting in faulty and out-of-date equipment such as the single blind shear ram. The company’s most recent safety checks in 2005 already revealed a number of major problems with the Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer, with one major piece of equipment “leaking badly” according to reports. Many checkpoints were skipped over because the rig was underwater and in the middle of operations, and BP later replaced a secondary ram in the preventer with a “test ram” in order to save money, even confirming with Transocean executives that the move would raise the company’s “risk profile.” “BP has cut corner after corner to save $1 million here, a few hours or days there, and now the whole Gulf Coast is paying the price,” said Henry A. Waxman, Chariman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The blow-out prevention technology needs to be reevaluated and a NASA-like system where oil companies have back-ups for back-ups. And now would also be a good time to have the team of scientists assembled by Energy Secretary Chu and BP engineers, in addition to other experts look at how to respond to off shore spills. What new technology do we need to develop to be ready in case even better blow-out preventers do not work. What equipment should new regulations require that oil companies have ready for an emergency – kinds of emergency capping devices for instance. Reforms are already underway in the federal Minerals Management Service to minimize conflicts of interests.. If dispersants are part of that plan shouldn’t we find one that works better and is less toxic. Should we invest in more and larger machines that are capable of filtering out the oil and returning clean water. Some of these issues could be worked out in short order given the priority and the rest worked out in the near future.
tangledwing 