Differing contributions of freshwater from glaciers and streams to the Arctic and Southern oceans appear to be responsible for the fact that the majority of microbial communities that thrive near the surface at the Poles share few common members, according to an international team of researchers, some of whom were supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
In a paper published in the Oct. 8 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the researchers report that only 25 percent of the taxonomic groups identified by genetic sequencing that are found at the surface of these waters are common between the two polar oceans. The differences were not as pronounced among microbes deeper in the oceans, with a 40 percent commonality for those populations.
The findings were produced by research supported by NSF during the International Polar Year 2007-2009 (IPY), a global scientific deployment that involved scientists from more than 60 nations. NSF was the lead U.S. agency for the IPY.
“Some of the DNA samples were collected during “Oden Southern Ocean 2007-2008,” a unique collaborative effort between NSF’s Office of Polar Programs and the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat to perform oceanographic research in the difficult-to-reach and poorly studied Amundsen Sea,” said Patricia Yager, a researcher at the University of Georgia and a co-author on the paper.
The Oden cruise was among the first IPY deployments. In addition, some of the samples used in the research were gathered as part of NSF’s Life in Extreme Environments Program.
The Polar regions often are described as being, in many ways, mirror images of one another–the Arctic being a ocean surrounded by continental landmasses, while Antarctica is a continent surrounded by an ocean–but the new findings add a biological nuance to those comparisons.
“We believe that differences in environmental conditions at the poles and different selection mechanisms were at play in controlling surface and deep ocean community structure between polar oceans,” said Alison Murray of the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nev., and a co-author on the PNAS paper. “Not surprisingly, the Southern and Arctic oceans are nearest neighbors to each other when compared with communities from lower latitude oceans.”
One of the most notable differences in environmental conditions between the two polar oceans is freshwater input. In the Southern Ocean, glacial melt water accounts for most of the freshwater that flows into the systems. In contrast, the Arctic Ocean receives much bigger pulses of freshwater from several large river systems with huge continental drainage basins, in addition to glacial melt water.
The group found that the differences between the poles were most pronounced in the microbial communities sampled from the coastal regions. “This likely is a result of the significant differences in freshwater sourcing to the two polar oceans,” said Jean-Francois Ghiglione, lead author of the article and professor at the Observatoire Oceanologique in Banyuls-Sur-Mer, France.
While the surface microbial communities appear to be dominated by environmental selection, such as through the freshwater inputs, the deep communities are more constrained by historical events and connected through oceanic circulation, providing evidence for biogeographically defined communities in the global ocean, according to the authors.
The team compared 20 samples from the Southern Ocean and 24 from the Arctic from both surface and deep waters. They also included an additional 48 samples from lower latitudes to investigate the polar signal in global marine bacterial biogeography.
The researchers specifically compared samples from coastal and open oceans and between winter and summer, to test whether or how environmental conditions and dispersal patterns shape communities in the polar oceans. Samples were processed and analyzed using an identical approach, based on a special technique of DNA sequencing called pyrosequencing, involving more than 800,000 sequences from the 92 samples.
“Our analyses identified a number of key organisms in both poles in the surface and deep ocean waters that are important in driving the differences between the communities,” Murray said. “Further research is needed to address the ecological and evolutionary processes underlying these patterns.”
The collaborative research was the result of an international effort coordinated by Murray, that involved national polar research programs from six countries–Canada, France, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden and the United States. Support for the work also came from the Sloan Foundation’s Census of Marine Life program, which stimulated field efforts at both poles and a separate program targeting marine microbes, the International Census of Marine Microbes, that developed the approach and conducted the sequencing effort.
“The collective energies required to bring this study to fruition were remarkable,” Murray said. “Through using similar strategies and technologies from sample collection through next- generation sequencing, we have a highly comparable, unprecedented dataset that for the first time has really allowed us to look in depth across a relatively large number of samples into the similarities of the microbial communities between the two polar oceans.”
Confocal microscope images of the symbiosis. (Niculina Musat & Cristina Moraru)
Scientists have discovered an unusual symbiosis between tiny single-celled algae and highly specialized bacteria in the ocean.
The partnership plays an important role in fertilizing the oceans by taking nitrogen from the atmosphere and “fixing” it into a form that other organisms can use.
Details of the finding, published in this week’s issue of the journal Science, emerged from the investigation of a mysterious nitrogen-fixing microbe that has a very small genome.
First detected in 1998 by Jonathan Zehr, a marine scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), the microbe now appears to be the most widespread nitrogen-fixing organism in the oceans.
It belongs to a group of photosynthetic bacteria known as cyanobacteria, but it lacks the genes needed to carry out photosynthesis.
Apparently its association with the algae makes those genes unnecessary.
“The cyanobacterium is a nitrogen-fixer, so it provides nitrogen to the host cell [the algae], and the host cell provides needed carbon to the cyanobacterium, which is lacking the machinery to get its own,” says Anne Thompson, a lead author of the paper and researcher at UCSC. Rachel Foster of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology is the other lead author.
The finding has uncovered a symbiosis between two types of microorganisms that had remained hidden until now, says Matt Kane, program director in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research along with NSF’s Division of Ocean Sciences.
In previous work, Zehr’s team had studied the cyanobacteria in samples processed at sea and brought back to the lab.
Seawater sampling during an oceanographic research cruise to the southeast Pacific Ocean. (Daniel Vaulot)
The researchers were able to sequence the microbe’s complete genome. They discovered that it’s missing the genes for several key metabolic pathways, suggesting that it might live in association with another organism.
The scientists were only able to see the symbiotic partners together when they sorted freshly collected seawater samples on board a research vessel.
“Our collaborators at the University of Hawaii, Dave Karl and Ken Doggett, put a cell sorter into a portable laboratory—a lab in a box—so now we can take the machine to sea and sort cells that minutes before were in their natural environment,” says Thompson. “That’s how we found the association.”
Zehr noted that it’s difficult to estimate the contribution of this symbiosis to global carbon and nitrogen cycles.
Other algae are more abundant and may be more important in terms of the ocean’s carbon cycle than the algae hosts in this symbiosis, he says. But the cyanobacteria partners likely make this a significant contribution to global nitrogen fixation in the oceans.
“Planktonic symbioses are very difficult to study,” says Foster. “The associations are often fragile. Here we used multiple tools to identify one of the first examples of this kind of partnership in plankton.”
In addition to Thompson, Zehr and Foster, the co-authors of the paper include Andreas Krupke, Niculina Musat and Marcel Kuypers of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology; Brandon Carter of UCSC; and Daniel Vaulot of the Station Biologique de Roscoff and the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris.
Alvin extends its mechanical arm to a high-temperature black smoker at Endeavor Segment. Credit: Bruce Strickrott/WHOI.
By some estimates, a third of Earth’s organisms live in our planet’s rocks and sediments, yet their lives are almost a complete mystery. This week, the work of microbiologist James Holden of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and colleagues shines a light into this dark world. In the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), they report the first detailed data on methane-exhaling microbes that live deep in the cracks of hot undersea volcanoes.
“Evidence has built that there’s an incredible amount of biomass in the Earth’s subsurface, in the crust and marine sediments, perhaps as much as all the plants and animals on the surface,” says Holden.
“We’re interested in the microbes in the deep rock, and the best place to study them is at hydrothermal vents at undersea volcanoes. Warm water there brings the nutrient and energy sources these microbes need.”
Just as biologists studied the habitats and life requirements of giraffes and penguins when they were new to science, Holden says, “for the first time we’re studying these subsurface microorganisms, defining their habitat requirements and determining how they differ among species.”
The result will advance scientists’ comprehension of biogeochemical cycles in the deep ocean, he and co-authors believe.
“Studies such as this add greatly to our understanding of microbial processes in the still poorly-known deep biosphere,” says David Garrison, program director in the National Science Foundation’s Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the research.
The project also addresses such questions as what metabolic processes may have looked like on Earth three billion years ago, and what alien microbial life might look like on other planets.
Because the study involves methanogens–microbes that inhale hydrogen and carbon dioxide to produce methane as waste–it may also shed light on natural gas formation on Earth.
One major goal was to test results of predictive computer models and to establish the first environmental hydrogen threshold for hyperthermophilic (super-heat-loving), methanogenic (methane-producing) microbes in hydrothermal vent fluids.
“Models have predicted the ‘habitability’ of the rocky environments we’re most interested in, but we wanted to ground-truth these models and refine them,” Holden says.
In a two-liter bioreactor at UMass Amherst where the scientists could control hydrogen levels, they grew pure cultures of hyperthermophilic methanogens from their study site alongside a commercially available hyperthermophilic methanogen species.
The researchers found that growth measurements for the organisms were about the same. All grew at the same rate when given equal amounts of hydrogen and had the same minimum growth requirements.
Holden and Helene Ver Eecke at UMass Amherst used culturing techniques to look for organisms in nature and then study their growth in the lab.
Co-investigators Julie Huber at the Marine Biological Laboratory on Cape Cod provided molecular analyses of the microbes, while David Butterfield and Marvin Lilley at the University of Washington contributed geochemical fluid analyses.
Using the research submarine Alvin, they collected samples of hydrothermal fluids flowing from black smokers up to 350 degrees C (662 degrees F), and from ocean floor cracks with lower temperatures.
Samples were taken from Axial Volcano and the Endeavour Segment, both long-term observatory sites along an undersea mountain range about 200 miles off the coast of Washington and Oregon and more than a mile below the ocean’s surface.
“We used specialized sampling instruments to measure both the chemical and microbial composition of hydrothermal fluids,” says Butterfield.
“This was an effort to understand the biological and chemical factors that determine microbial community structure and growth rates.”
A happy twist awaited the researchers as they pieced together a picture of how the methanogens live and work.
At the low-hydrogen Endeavour site, they found that a few hyperthermophilic methanogens eke out a living by feeding on the hydrogen waste produced by other hyperthermophiles.
“This was extremely exciting,” says Holden. “We’ve described a methanogen ecosystem that includes a symbiotic relationship between microbes.”
The research was also supported by the NASA Astrobiology Institute and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
As the nation suffers through a summer of record-shattering heat, a University of Michigan report finds that Generation X is lukewarm about climate change-uninformed about the causes and unconcerned about the potential dangers. “Most Generation Xers are surprisingly disengaged, dismissive or doubtful about whether global climate change is happening and they don’t spend much time worrying about it,” said Jon D. Miller, author of “The Generation X Report.”
The new report, the fourth in a continuing series, compares Gen X attitudes about climate change in 2009 and 2011, and describes the levels of concern Gen Xers have about different aspects of climate change, as well as their sources of information on the subject.
“We found a small but statistically significant decline between 2009 and 2011 in the level of attention and concern Generation X adults expressed about climate change,” Miller said. “In 2009, about 22 percent said they followed the issue of climate change very or moderately closely. In 2011, only 16 percent said they did so.”
Miller directs the Longitudinal Study of American Youth at the U-M Institute for Social Research. The study, funded by the National Science Foundation since 1986, now includes responses from approximately 4,000 Gen Xers-those born between 1961 and 1981, and now between 32 and 52 years of age.
Only about 5 percent of those surveyed in 2011 were alarmed about climate change, and another 18 percent said they were concerned about it. But 66 percent said they aren’t sure that global warming is happening, and about 10 percent said they don’t believe global warming is actually happening.
“This is an interesting and unexpected profile,” Miller said. “Few issues engage a solid majority of adults in our busy and pluralistic society, but the climate issue appears to attract fewer committed activists-on either side-than I would have expected.”
Because climate change is such a complex issue, education and scientific knowledge are important factors in explaining levels of concern, Miller said. Adults with more education are more likely to be alarmed and concerned about climate change, he found. And those who scored 90 or above on a 100-point Index of Civic Scientific Literacy also were significantly more likely to be alarmed or concerned than less knowledgeable adults.
Still, 12 percent of those who were highly literate scientifically were either dismissive or doubtful about climate change, Miller found. He also found that partisan affiliations predicted attitudes, with nearly half of liberal Democrats alarmed or concerned compared with zero percent of conservative Republicans.
This is a satellite view of the Zagros mountain belt in western Iran. The range forms part of the most extensive belt of water-soluble gypsum on Earth, stretching from Oman to Pakistan, and well into Western India. Scientists suggest that the dissolution of ancient salt deposits caused drastic changes in seawater chemistry, which may have triggered long-term global cooling. Credit: US Geological Survey/Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science.
Humans get most of the blame for climate change, with little attention paid to the contribution of other natural forces. Now, scientists from the University of Toronto and the University of California Santa Cruz are shedding light on one potential cause of the cooling trend of the past 45 million years that has everything to do with the chemistry of the world’s oceans.
“Seawater chemistry is characterized by long phases of stability, which are interrupted by short intervals of rapid change,” says Professor Ulrich Wortmann in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Toronto, lead author of a study to be published in Science this week.
“We’ve established a new framework that helps us better interpret evolutionary trends and climate change over long periods of time. The study focuses on the past 130 million years, but similar interactions have likely occurred through the past 500 million years.”
Wortmann and co-author Adina Paytan of the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of California Santa Cruz point to the collision between India and Eurasia approximately 50 million years ago as one example of an interval of rapid change.
This collision enhanced dissolution of the most extensive belt of water-soluble gypsum on Earth, stretching from Oman to Pakistan, and well into Western India – remnants of which are well exposed in the Zagros mountains.
The authors suggest that the dissolution or creation of such massive gyspum deposits will change the sulfate content of the ocean, and that this will affect the amount of sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere and thus climate.
“We propose that times of high sulfate concentrations in ocean water correlate with global cooling, just as times of low concentration correspond with greenhouse periods,” says Paytan.
“When India and Eurasia collided, it caused dissolution of ancient salt deposits which resulted in drastic changes in seawater chemistry,” Paytan continues. “This may have led to the demise of the Eocene epoch – the warmest period of the modern-day Cenozoic era – and the transition from a greenhouse to icehouse climate, culminating in the beginning of the rapid expansion of the Antarctic ice sheet.”
Think Pink! Success of pink bacteria in oceans of the world
by Staff Writers
Leibniz, Germany (SPX)
Marine bacteria Roseobacter clade.
Marine bacteria of the Roseobacter clade are found to be spread widely throughout the oceans of this planet from the tropics to as far as Antarctica. They live freely in the water, in sediments and as symbiotic partners of algae. Special photosynthetic pigments are responsible for their pink colour. Marine bacteria distinguish themselves through an unusually diverse metabolism, which opens interesting opportunities for biotechnological applications.
A reconstruction of their evolutionary development will provide a key for scientists to understand the secret for their ecological success. Researchers at the DSMZ have now discovered that, through plasmids, representatives of the Roseobacter group may exchange such important genetic characteristics as the capability to perform photosynthesis.
This type of horizontal gene transfer across the species boundary might make it possible for bacteria of the Roseobacter clade to quickly and effectively conquer new ecological niches. The results of experiments have been published in the magazine Environmental Microbiology and are already available online.
Since 2010, scientists of the Leibniz-Institut DSMZ-Deutsche Sammlung von Mikroorganismen und Zellkulturen GmbH (Leibniz Institute DSMZ German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures) have been working together with marine microbiologists, ecologists, biochemists, geneticists and information technologists in the Transregio 51 Roseobacter collaborative research centre.
The goal of this collaborative research group is to understand the evolutionary, genetic and physiological principles which are responsible for the success of this group of bacteria that have not yet been the object of very extensive research to date. What special genetic features do these bacteria have to enable them to adapt to the most varied of natural habitats?
The DSMZ researchers in the team of Dr. Jorn Petersen, Private Lecturer and Dr. Silke Pradella have now found a clue leading to an important point of reference. The scientists examined the evolution and importance of so-called “plasmids” within the Roseobacter clade which are to be found there in great numbers and varieties.
“Plasmids are usually ring-shaped DNA molecules with a size of up to 1 million base pairs which can duplicate themselves independently of the bacterial chromosome. Natural plasmids encode such useful properties as nitrogen fixation. However, they are also responsible for the development of multiresistant hospital pathogens”, the geneticist and evolutionary biologist Dr. Jorn Petersen explains.
disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only
The 2,500-year-old tree under which Gautama Buddha is believed to have attained enlightenment is alive and healthy, Indian scientists said Thursday.
The Bodhi tree, a large Sacred Fig (Ficus religiosa,) is in Bodh Gaya in India’s eastern state of Bihar, about 60 miles from the state capital of Patna.
“The Bodhi tree is fully healthy,” Subhash Nautiyal of the Forest Research Institute in India’s northern state of Uttarakhand said.
Nautiyal and colleagues examined the tree after removing the cement slabs around its base, China’s Xinhua News Agency reported.
“It will help the tree to receive water and nutrition in its roots,” the scientists said.
The 1,500-year-old temple behind the sacred tree is visited by large numbers of tourists from all over the world, particularly from Japan.
As sulfur cycles through Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and land, it undergoes chemical changes that are often coupled to changes in other such elements as carbon and oxygen. Although this affects the concentration of free oxygen, sulfur has traditionally been portrayed as a secondary factor in regulating atmospheric oxygen, with most of the heavy lifting done by carbon. However, new findings that appeared this week in Science suggest that sulfur’s role may have been underestimated.
Drs. Itay Halevy of the Weizmann Institute’s Environmental Science and Energy Research Department (Faculty of Chemistry), Shanan Peters of the University of Wisconsin and Woodward Fischer of the California Institute of Technology, were interested in better understanding the global sulfur cycle over the last 550 million years – roughly the period in which oxygen has been at its present atmospheric level of around 20%.
They used a database developed and maintained by Peters at the University of Wisconsin, called Macrostrat, which contains detailed information on thousands of rock units in North America and beyond.
The researchers used the database to trace one of the ways in which sulfur exits ocean water into the underlying sediments – the formation of so-called sulfate evaporite minerals. These sulfur-bearing minerals, such as gypsum, settle to the bottom of shallow seas as seawater evaporates.
The team found that the formation and burial of sulfate evaporites were highly variable over the last 550 million years, due to changes in shallow sea area, the latitude of ancient continents and sea level.
More surprising to Halevy and colleagues was the discovery that only a relatively small fraction of the sulfur cycling through the oceans has exited seawater in this way. Their research showed that the formation and burial of a second sulfur-bearing mineral – pyrite – has apparently been much more important.
Pyrite is an iron-sulfur mineral (also known as fools’ gold), which forms when microbes in seafloor sediments use the sulfur dissolved in seawater to digest organic matter. The microbes take up sulfur in the form of sulfate (bound to four oxygen atoms) and release it as sulfide (with no oxygen).
Oxygen is released during this process, thus making it a source of oxygen in the air. But because this part of the sulfur cycle was thought be minor in comparison to sulfate evaporite burial (which does not release oxygen), its effect on oxygen levels was also thought to be unimportant.
In testing various theoretical models of the sulfur cycle against the Macrostrat data, the team realized that the production and burial of pyrite has been much more significant than previously thought, accounting for more than 80% of all sulfur removed from the ocean (rather than the 30-40% in prior estimates). As opposed to the variability they saw for sulfate evaporite burial, pyrite burial has been relatively stable throughout the period.
Alright it’s Thursday, which means that it’s time to talk some tech. First, a report on the Music Industry’s global anti-piracy strategy was leaked and put up on Torrent Freak. And let’s just say it tells us a thing or two about the MegaUpload case. Then, something good actually came of out Washington DC. The Police Chief reminded officers that they actually have to respect citizens constructional rights. And can Twitter predict when people will get sick? And if so, what’s next? Global weather trends? Maybe even Armageddon? Here to give us some details on all of it and Talk Tech To Me is RT Web Producer Andrew Blake.
Microsoft mum on whether it can tap Skype phone calls
EFF says if you want to make secure calls, don’t use Skype
Microsoft may or may not have the ability to tap Skype phone calls, but the company just won’t say, and it’s not clear why.
Asked a yes/no question whether it can intercept encrypted calls made over the peer-to-peer voice and video service, the company says it tries to help out with legal eavesdropping as much as it can, but won’t say exactly what that means.
“Skype co-operates with law enforcement agencies as much as is legally and technically possible,” a company spokesperson says in an email response to questions about the capability. It’s an answer that begs the question of whether it actually has the ability to tap calls as law enforcement agencies might request under the U.S. Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA).
Asked why the company won’t give a simple answer, the spokesperson responds: “It’s the company position. You have our statements. That’s all I can say. “
Suspicion that Skype might have means to eavesdrop on calls built in cropped up when Microsoft was issued a patent earlier this year on lawful intercept, aspects of which “relate to silently recording communications.” This is done by modifying call requests so the communications path that is set up includes a node with a recording mechanism.
Beyond the issue of a built-in eavesdropping technology, the effectiveness of Skype security is also being questioned. Before Microsoft bought it last year for $8.5 billion, Skype was known for being secure through obscurity. The company would reveal nothing about the encryption it used, and governments demanded that Skype make it possible for them to listen in on the encrypted calls, and that is the current situation.
A report last year says the Egyptian government had the ability to eavesdrop on Skype calls made by dissidents during the uprisings there in 2010. It’s not clear whether the government broke Skype’s security or whether it had installed malware on Skype endpoint computers to capture calls as they were being played unencrypted on speakers or picked up by microphones
If the internet were a city, the comment sections of some of even the most popular websites would be the dregs, where parents wouldn’t dare bring their children and even the most optimistic would feel hopeless. Racism, sexism, and outright bullying of absolute strangers – to the extent of encouraging suicide – isn’t uncommon, and those who contribute to it protect themselves from retribution by denying their identity.
Lately, though, some of the internet’s heavy hitters have made some attempts at instilling some accountability in internet dialogue. Their efforts might make for good PR, but will accomplish little more than that.
YouTube has long been one of the roughest sites on the web in terms of internet commenting, which should come as no surprise. Given its size and the ability it grants to anyone who wants to submit a video they’d made, YouTube has unintentionally become sort of a massive, never-ending high school talent show where the hecklers are allowed to hurl whatever insults they want and the consequences are felt only by those performing.
With that in mind, YouTube has begun moving ahead on its promise made at last month’s Google I/O conference.
First announced in a June 29th blog post, YouTube has begun prompting its users and commenters to use their real names by linking to the Google+ accounts that the comapny apparently assumes they all have.
An option to comment without using your real name is still available, although Google is not intent on permitting it without giving users the run-around. As BetaBeat’s Jessica Roy described it yesterday, the site “basically guilts you into agreeing.”
If you still insist on remaining anonymous, you have to tell Google why: “My channel is for a show or character” or “My channel name is well-known for other reasons” are two options. “I want to remain anonymous,” is–unsurprisingly–not one.
However, YouTube’s blog post does make it clear that anonymous commenting is still an option.
We realize that using your full name isn’t for everyone. Maybe people know you by your YouTube username. Perhaps you don’t want your name publicly associated with your channel. To continue using your YouTube username, just click “I don’t want to use my full name” when you see the prompt.
Though the ability to opt-out does take a little air out of this movement’s tires, it’s still a commendable admission by YouTube that it needs to clean up its streets. It also isn’t the only recent sign of an impending War on Trolls, either.
Online Privacy: Americans Want It, and They Want It Now. So Why Can’t They Get It?
A new survey by Truste claims 94 percent of people care deeply about online privacy. Unfortunately, none of them are in the online advertising industry.
Tis the season for surveys. Last week I noted a survey by PwC about what personal data consumers are willing to give up, and what they want in return for it. The respondents to that survey were quite concerned about their privacy and understood their data had real monetary value.
Today’s topic is another recent survey, this one commissioned by Truste, an organization that offers a Good Housekeeping-style seal of approval for corporate privacy practices. As with PwC, Truste’s survey suggests that consumer concern about online and mobile privacy is on the rise, and people are much more sophisticated about the issues than the ad industry might have you believe.
According to the survey, a whopping 94 percent of the 1000+ people surveyed consider privacy issues “really important” or “somewhat important,” and six out of ten are more concerned about it than they were a year ago.
More than a third claim they’ve stopped visiting a Web site or doing business with a company because they were concerned for their privacy, and 83 percent are aware of behavioral (ie, targeted) ads, up from 70 percent last year.
Admittedly, asking people questions like these often inspires them to answer in the way they think they’re supposed to, not necessarily in the way they actually act when not taking an online survey.
(“Do you floss after every single meal to ensure cleaner teeth and a whiter smile? Why, yes, I’m doing it right now.”)
For example: In this survey, 40 percent of people claim to read a Web site’s privacy policy often or most of the time. I think that number is off by a factor of ten. Even I don’t read privacy policies most of the time, and I do this for a living. Likewise for things like refusing to allow third parties to share information (76 percent) or opting out of online ads (50 percent). I suspect there’s a bit of self delusion at play here (though not as much as this guy seems to believe).
Still, because Truste asked the same questions last year, you can draw the conclusion that all the public debate over mobile privacy, GPS tracking, and Do Not Track legislation has had an impact. People are more aware of the issues, and they’re taking more steps to protect themselves. That’s all good, and I’ll happily take all the credit for it.
Has Microsoft has figured out a way to bug Skype calls? A report published in Slate late last week suggests this might maybe possibly be theoretically true — cue the InterWeb’s full-blown paranoia party.
In a blog post titled “Skype won’t say whether it can eavesdrop on your conversations,” Slate’s Ryan Gallagher determined through dogged questioning that Microsoft will neither confirm nor deny that it has built a backdoor into Skype that would allow the government to wiretap VoIP calls.
From this he naturally concludes that Microsoft really is eavesdropping on our conversations and is trying to keep it a big fat secret:
… when I repeatedly questioned the company on Wednesday whether it could currently facilitate wiretap requests, a clear answer was not forthcoming. Citing “company policy,” Skype PR man Chaim Haas wouldn’t confirm or deny, telling me only that the chat service “co-operates with law enforcement agencies as much as is legally and technically possible.”
Shares of Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil just went up 17 percent on the news.
Gallagher also relied on a story by another Forbes blogger, Anthony Wing Kosner, which quoted from an ExtremeTech story by Tim Verry about claims made a hacker who goes by the handle Alien Nesby, who says Microsoft added “backdoors for government” to Skype after the acquisition was final.
Nesby made his claim based on a 43-word comment posted three months ago on Hacker News, but he wrote it in FULL CAPS, so you know it must be true.
Microsoft directly denied the claims made in Verry’s post, noting it did recently overhaul its Skype network, but the changes were made to increase quality of service and security, not for spying. But that didn’t stop Forbes blogger Eric Jackson from jumping right on the paranoia pony and riding it to the finish line. In a blog post titled “It’s terrifying and sickening that Microsoft can listen in on all my Skype calls,” Eric proves he has 1) a rather delicate constitution, and b) clearly been taking courses in how to write traffic-magnet blog headlines.
Last week, my 5-year old slammed her finger in the door so hard that we thought it was broken for sure. Immediately, her finger began swelling and my husband and I were about to bolt out to the door to take her for an X-ray. She was terrified and crying, and all we wanted was to take her pain away. I grabbed an instant ice pack out of our medical supplies for her finger and decided to wait 30 minutes to see if the swelling changed. I laid her on my bed and cuddled with her while ensuring her fingers were in between the ice pack. When I checked her finger, the swelling had begun to subside and I breathed a sigh of relief. You never know when a medical emergency will arise, but you are always hoping that when it does, you will be ready for it.
As I previously mentioned, to be fully prepared for a medical disaster, you need to have a well-rounded medical supply. Since there are so many different types of medical supplies to store, I have broken them up to make the list more affordable. Click to see List 1 and List 2.
Because medical emergencies can occur suddenly and without warning, your medical supplies should be diverse and unique to your family’s needs. Situations may arise and getting to the store or the emergency room may not be a viable option. Therefore, having a wide array of medical supplies at your home can help diffuse an alarming situation.
When creating a medical supply, think about which medical issues will most likely occur and prepare accordingly for them. Also, have some supplies on hand for any family members who have pre-existing conditions would make a prolonged disaster more comfortable.
In 2006, The National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS) released a 2006 Emergency Department Summary that gathered statistics of emergency department use, including the most common reasons adults and children sought medical care and treatment. Having medical supplies that could assist in these common medical emergencies would be proactive on your part.
Children Fever
Childhood Earaches
Various injuries such as sprains, strains, broken bones
Chest Pain
Abdominal Pain
Back Pain
Shortness of Breath
It is very important to have vitamins in your medical supplies. Vitamins are essential in regulating body functions and also help in the healing process. Storing the right types of food that have the highest amounts of vitamins would be one way of ensuring that your diet is vitamin packed. Therefore, prepare by having first hand knowledge on what vitamins the body needs on a daily basis. Storing multivitamins such as, Centrum multivitamins or Centrum Silver multivitamins are great options.
Storing medical supplies in the home for a possible disaster could save some one’s life if they need immediate medical assistance. In the event of a major disaster, such as a hurricane or earthquake, if someone in the home is injured, emergency responders cannot always get to the injured victims in time. Experts suggest having a well stocked arsenal of medical supplies in this instance.
Suggested Home Medical Supplies
The idea of having medical supplies in the home is to be prepared for any given situation that could arise. In the long run, if supplies are adequately organized and ready to go, the person administering medical assistance will have everything in place and be ready to act. Making an inventory list of everything that is needed for all family members (include children’s needs as well as family members with special needs) as well as items that have already been purchased can help with organizing the supplies for storage.
Antacids
Anti-diarrheal
pain reliever
Children’s pain reliever
First aid book
Prescription medications (keep copies for records)
Cold/flu medicines
Vitamins
Blood clotting
Sterile gauze
Dressing bandages
Dressing rolls
Medical tape
Bandages of all sizes
Alcohol wipes
Hydrogen peroxide
Eye flushing solution
Anesthetic solution
Hypodermic needles (for the antiseptic solution)
Electrolyte tablets
Benadryl
Scissors
Tweezers
Cold Packs
Warm Blankets
Antibiotic ointment
Thermometers
Skin irritation creams
Gloves
Mask
Suture needles/string
List of medical contact phone numbers
Medical history file (if needed)
Animals and house pets can often fall victim to an injury as well. Having medicine and first aid supplies for them will ensure their health and safety.
It seems that natural storms have become more severe in recent years. No one takes hurricanes lightly anymore due to the shock and awe that hurricane Katrina caused when she came ashore. These monster storms are so violent and have the capacity to level an entire town.
Hurricanes are serious tropical storms with winds that exceed 74 mph and have a tendency to cause structural damage to homes and commercial businesses. Inland flooding is also a concern for many who live on the coasts because a hurricane can dump dozens of inches of water in a matter of days. The extent of the damage done by a hurricane depends on the category that is has been assigned. The categories range from 1 (minimal damage) to 5 (severe damage). Plans and preparations should be made prior to the possibility of a hurricane threat.
Those that live in the coastal areas know that hurricanes are always lurking around the corner. Therefore, it is only logical to have a disaster plan in place in the case this is the year the hurricane will hit.
Make a Plan
A disaster plan is one of the most important aspects of preparedness. A decisive plan of action should take into account the pros and cons of any given situation. The basic premise of having a disaster plan is to know what your Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C is before the disaster strikes. Your main priorities are shelter, fire, and water, and food. When preparing a disaster plan, keep all the information together in a binder called the G.O.O.D Manual. This will keep vital information, emergency plans, contact information, etc organized and ready in the case someone needs it in a pinch. It would be wise to write down a main contact of someone outside of the hurricane area that you can use as a communication hub to relay pertinent information to other members of the family or friends. This is important because 1. You do not want to be on the phone the entire time calling people with updates, and 2. Phone lines are going to be maxed out. It will be hard to get through multiple times.
If you plan on bugging out or evacuating, get the evuaction plan in order, needed items together and try and leave before the mass exodus. No one wants to be caught in idle traffic for hours. Also, having extra gallons of gasoline would also be beneficial. In the past, many refugees who did not have extra gas and ran out of gas ended up having to abandon their cars on the highway. Bottom line is plan ahead and try and leave as early as possible.
Calling one person will minimize the time of the phone, and you can concentrate your effort on other important things. Additionally, contact a friend or relative to see if you would be able to stay with them (if you plan on getting out of the storms path).
Plan For The Worst Scenario and Get Emergency Supplies Now
Typically, when a hurricane watch or warning is issued, there is a mass flock to the stores to gather items. People tend to buy the exact same thing (canned goods, water, infant formula, etc), and these are the items that run out the fastest. Those who wait to gather supplies until the last minute are typically the ones who will either end up waiting in long lines, or go home empty handed because all the stores have sold our of supplies.
The most important item to have on hand besides a plan, is water. Multiple disaster organizations suggest having 1 gallon of water per person per day. This suggestion is for drinking purposes only. If a person wants to flush their toilet or clean dirty dishes, they will need to have extra water on hand. Having a water filter or micropur tablets is a good idea to have on hand in the case that city water is interrupted or a person’s well has become contaminated. Here are some additional suggestions for having extra water on hand:
Properly clean and bleach a bath tub. Caulk the drain hold and allow it to dry. Fill it with water.
Freeze zip loc bags filled with water.
Use emtpy juice containers (cleaned thoroughly) and fill them with water.
Fill buckets with water to use for flushing the toilet.
Gathering foods for a short term disaster can be relatively inexpensive. It is a good idea to plan for the worst case scenario so that everything can be prepared for. Since electicity going out is typically a problem with hurricanes, purchase foods that can be stored without refrigeration. Furthermore, plan meals to meet a 1500-2000 calorie diet that are high in nutrients so that individuals in the home can keep up their energy levels up. Keep in mind any members of the family that are on special diets (including pets).
Other supplies such as flashlights, batteries, a battery operated or solar radio, first aid kit and a good can opener are some other additional items one may need if a hurricane hits. Gasoline will also be in an extremely high demand. Especially if a person is using a generator to power a home. Having a ready supply of fuel will help make the experience of bugging in a little less of a burden and more of a minor inconvenience.
The sudden strike of an earthquake can catch many off guard. For those that live in earthquake prone areas, preparing ahead of time will keep a person as safe as possible during the turmoil that the earthquake brings.
Develop an Emergency Plan
When an unexpected event happens, many are confused and do not know what to do. Having a set disaster plan in place can help members of the family get to safety.
Do research on local emergency management (American Red Cross, City Disaster Services, etc) systems and know what their disaster protocols are.
Teach children about the different communication sources available such as 9-1-1, and how to work a battery operated radio in order to listen for emergency information. Additionally, all family members should know how to turn off the home utilities (emergency, gas and water).
Have an emergency plan in place. This will help family members know exactly where to go and what to do. The emergency plan should have a meeting place designated in the event that family members are separated. Additionally, having a central contact outside of the disaster area that can relay messages can help a family stay in touch if separated.
Look for any hazards in the home. Do as much preparation as possible to the home in order to secure the area as much as possible.
Place heavy or bulkier items on lower shelves.
Cabinets and pantries where breakable items are stores should have latches on them. Additionally, any poisonous material, such as fertilizers or pesticides should be stored in a locked area as well.
Secure shelves to walls.
Brace overhead light fixtures.
Repair any defective electrical wiring or leaking gas connections. If there are damages done to the ceiling or foundation, get an expert opinion about any structural defects.
Secure the water heater by strapping it to wall studs.
Avoid hanging pictures and heavy mirrors over beds, couches or where people tend to sit.
Disaster Food Supplies
Water and Food
Store 3-days worth of potable water in plastic containers. Potable water is water safe for human consumption. It is free of disease causing microorganisms, poisonous substances, minerals, organic matter, chemical, biological and radioactive substances. Another method is to freeze water in plastic soda containers. FEMA recommends that a person should have 1-gallon of water per person for at least 3 days.
Stockpile a 3 day supply of non-perishable items such as canned goods, dehydrated foods, high energy foods such as granola bars, power bars, trail mix and cereals. Try and find foods that does not require much water to prepare them. Enure that certain foods are stored away for family members with special needs.
Medical Supplies
Keeping a well stocked medical supply can come in handy if someone has a injury. First aid kits can be assembled at home and include all of the basic first aid items that may be needed. A list of complete first aid items can be seen here.
Disaster Tools
Your preparedness tools are your life line during emergencies. The tools you choose should be ones that you can depend on to assist in meeting your basic survival needs. Without them, you could be ill-equipped in a survival situation. Ensure that disaster tools are stored in a centralized location in order for you to get to them during a time sensitive manner. Some suggested emergency tools are:
There’s a glimmer of hope for whistleblower Julian Assange as Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he’s currently taking refuge, says Swedish authorities are welcome to come over to question Assange over sex crime allegations. Ecuador says it will decide on whether to grant asylum after the London Olympics, which end on August 12th. Michael Ratner, a legal advisor to both Julian Assange and Wikileaks says Ecuador does offer hope to Assange.
Whistleblowers in armed forces must be protected, says MP Angus Robertson
Angus Robertson MP for Moray
By Paul Ward
Whistleblowers in the armed forces should be given the same protection as civilian employees, according to a senior SNP MP.
Armed forces personnel are forbidden from discussing their work with MPs, MEPs or members of devolved legislatures (MDLs) such as the Scottish or Welsh parliaments without the approval of UK government ministers.
SNP defence spokesman Angus Robertson, the party’s leader at Westminster, has questioned “what the MoD has to hide”.
He insisted that “scandals” such as kit shortages, maintenance shortcuts and “the many MoD procurement bungles” would not have been revealed without whistleblowers.
Mr Robertson has circulated MoD instructions on contact with parliamentarians, obtained through a freedom of information request, informing forces personnel they are “accountable to ministers” and “not accountable to parliament”.
The document is marked “unclassified” but with instructions that it is “not to be communicated to anyone outside HM Service without authority”.
It says there should “be no need for contact between Crown servants, irrespective of seniority, and parliamentarians unless specifically authorised by the Secretary of State or a delegated minister”.
Personnel are also instructed to inform ministers of any unexpected or unsolicited contact with parliamentarians or their staff.
UK government guidance says employers cannot prevent employees from reporting improper, illegal or negligent behaviour as part of their employment contract or any other agreement.
Late Wednesday evening, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Darrell Issa and Senator Chuck Grassley sent a letter to Acting ATF Director Todd Jones asking him to clarify the following remarks:
“… if you make poor choices, that if you don’t abide by the rules, that if you don’t respect the chain of command, if you don’t find the appropriate way to raise your concerns to your leadership, there will be consequences. …”
“Disciplinary process.”
Issa and Grassley aren’t impressed. From the letter they sent him:
If courageous whistleblowers within the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF/Agency) had not come forward to Congress, the tactics used in Operation Fast and Furious might never have come to light. By providing Congress key information about the shortcomings of Fast and Furious, these whistleblowers put their careers on the line to prevent reckless operational tactics from ever being employed again and to make sure the family of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry got the whole truth about their son’s death. On numerous occasions, we have stressed to ATF and the Department of Justice the importance of protecting whistleblower disclosures and preventing retaliation against whistleblowers.
We recently reviewed a video message you sent to ATF employees on July 9, 2012. In this message, entitled “ChangeCase #8: Choices and Consequences,” you stress to ATF employees that “if you make poor choices, that if you don’t abide by the rules, that if you don’t respect the chain of command, if you don’t find the appropriate way to raise your concerns to your leadership, there will be consequences…” The essence of whistleblowing is reporting problems outside of an employee’s chain of command when the chain of command has failed to address them. In fact, for a disclosure to be legally protected, it is often necessary for the employee to report the wrongdoing to someone other than his or her supervisor.
Your ominous message–which could be interpreted as a threat–is likely to have a major chilling effect on ATF employees exercising their rights to Contact Congress. Therefore, it needs to be clarified.
You must remind ATF employees about their right to talk to Congress and provide Congress with information free and clear of agency interference or retaliation.
ATF whistleblowers Jay Dobyns and Vince Cefalu are also hitting back against Jones’ remarks. Both Dobyns and Cefalu, agents with more than 20 years of experience in the bureau, expressed concerns about unethical behavior to their superiors and nothing was done. Cefalu founded CleanUpATF.org back in 2009 in order to give ATF agents across the country an anonymous place to expose corruption within ATF without fear of retaliation. His website is where Operation Fast and Furious was first exposed. Dobyns worked undercover for two years within the Hells Angel gang, risking his life for ATF, and is now being punished by the bureau for speaking out against supervisors who ignored death threats against himself and his family.
“Many ATF agents have confronted the corruption and abuses for years. We provided documentary evidence to the Attorney General, Office of the Inspector General, Office of Special Counsel and members of Congress in writing. We were ignored until people died. We are still being ignored by Mr. Jones and a handful of his executive staff. Most, if not all of the agency’s failures could have and should have been prevented. It’s a sad day for the future of a great bureau,” Cefalu tells Townhall.
COLD SPRING — The bishop for Diocese of Covington removed the 15-member board of the troubled Campbell Lodge Boys’ Home the same day four former employees filed a lawsuit claiming they were retaliated against for exposing neglect at the nonprofit.
“My very first concern is for the residents of the (lodge), for their safety and well-being,” Bishop Roger Foys wrote in a statement to The Enquirer. “It is my hope that they will find a safe haven and be treated with the dignity and respect due every person.
“After having reviewed the investigative reports I believe it is necessary to have a fresh set of eyes evaluate what future the Home may have in our Diocese.”
The bishop appoints the board members and has the power to remove them at will, according to the home’s 1958 articles of incorporation. The home receives about $1.2 million – or 76 percent of its budget – from tax dollars annually. The nonprofit’s tax returns show it receives virtually no money from the diocese.
The lawsuit was filed Thursday in Campbell Circuit Court by the home’s former therapists Jennifer Rush and Shane Donohue, along with the director of equine-assisted services, Mary Oldiges, and equine specialist Regina Bach.
The defendants named in the suit are the home, fired executive director Barry Jones and the former board members.
Diocese spokesman Tim Fitzgerald said the diocese would announce the new board members soon.
The new board is expected to hold their first board meeting in mid-September, Fitzgerald said.
The home’s attorney, Ben Dusing, and Jones’ attorney, Walter Hornbeck, both confirmed they were aware of the lawsuit but declined to comment on it.
The future of the 54-year-old home remains uncertain.
The children at the home, licensed to care for 24 at a time, were removed after the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services investigated the whistleblowers’ claims. The home then laid off about 50 employees and fired Jones, who earned $96,652 per year.
The suit echoes the findings of the state investigation. The home had a dangerous practice of improperly dispensing psychotropic medications and narcotics to the children. When the children acted out, the staff then handled them roughly.
Several demonstrators have been wounded in Saudi Arabia’s eastern district of Qatif after security forces opened fire on protesters. MORE INFO & PHOTOS: http://on.rt.com/ko740y
In as many days, police and residents of Anaheim have clashed over the police shooting of an unarmed man: In total, 2 men have been killed, 5 for the year, on record, enraging the mostly black and Latino population of Anaheim, a city known for Disneyland, but now described as a powder keg ready to explode.
Hundreds of human fetuses, found in a forest in central Russia, may have been removed from a local medical university. Police are questioning a researcher, who was fired last year and could have taken the material she was working on with her. However, some doctors say the dumped fetuses could even be the product of cloning.
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As sulfur cycles through Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and land, it undergoes chemical changes that are often coupled to changes in other such elements as carbon and oxygen. Although this affects the concentration of free oxygen, sulfur has traditionally been portrayed as a secondary factor in regulating atmospheric oxygen, with most of the heavy lifting done by carbon. However, new findings that appeared this week in Science suggest that sulfur’s role may have been underestimated.
Drs. Itay Halevy of the Weizmann Institute’s Environmental Science and Energy Research Department (Faculty of Chemistry), Shanan Peters of the University of Wisconsin and Woodward Fischer of the California Institute of Technology, were interested in better understanding the global sulfur cycle over the last 550 million years – roughly the period in which oxygen has been at its present atmospheric level of around 20%.
They used a database developed and maintained by Peters at the University of Wisconsin, called Macrostrat, which contains detailed information on thousands of rock units in North America and beyond.
The researchers used the database to trace one of the ways in which sulfur exits ocean water into the underlying sediments – the formation of so-called sulfate evaporite minerals. These sulfur-bearing minerals, such as gypsum, settle to the bottom of shallow seas as seawater evaporates.
The team found that the formation and burial of sulfate evaporites were highly variable over the last 550 million years, due to changes in shallow sea area, the latitude of ancient continents and sea level.
More surprising to Halevy and colleagues was the discovery that only a relatively small fraction of the sulfur cycling through the oceans has exited seawater in this way. Their research showed that the formation and burial of a second sulfur-bearing mineral – pyrite – has apparently been much more important.
Pyrite is an iron-sulfur mineral (also known as fools’ gold), which forms when microbes in seafloor sediments use the sulfur dissolved in seawater to digest organic matter. The microbes take up sulfur in the form of sulfate (bound to four oxygen atoms) and release it as sulfide (with no oxygen).
Oxygen is released during this process, thus making it a source of oxygen in the air. But because this part of the sulfur cycle was thought be minor in comparison to sulfate evaporite burial (which does not release oxygen), its effect on oxygen levels was also thought to be unimportant.
In testing various theoretical models of the sulfur cycle against the Macrostrat data, the team realized that the production and burial of pyrite has been much more significant than previously thought, accounting for more than 80% of all sulfur removed from the ocean (rather than the 30-40% in prior estimates). As opposed to the variability they saw for sulfate evaporite burial, pyrite burial has been relatively stable throughout the period.
The analysis also revealed that most of the sulfur entering the ocean washed in from the weathering of pyrite exposed on land. In other words, there is a balance between pyrite formation and burial, which releases oxygen, and the weathering of pyrite on land, which consumes it. The implication of these findings is that the sulfur cycle regulates the atmospheric concentration of oxygen more strongly than previously appreciated.
“This is the first use of Macrostrat to quantify chemical fluxes in the Earth system,” said Peters. “I met my coauthors at a lecture I gave at Caltech, and we immediately began discussing how we might apply Macrostrat to understanding biogeochemical cycling. I think this study will open the door to many more uses of Macrostrat for constraining biogeochemical cycles.”
“For me, the truly surprising result is that pyrite weathering and burial appear to be such important processes in the sulfur cycle throughout all of Earth’s history. The carbon cycle is recognized as the central hub controlling redox processes on Earth, but our work suggests that nearly as many electrons are shuttled through the sulfur cycle,” said Fischer.
Halevy: “These findings, in addition to shedding new light on the role of sulfur in regulating oxygen levels in the atmosphere, represent an important step forward in developing a quantitative, mechanistic understanding of the processes governing the global sulfur cycle.”
The largest oil spill on open water to date and other environmental factors led to the historically high number of dolphin deaths in the Gulf of Mexico, concludes a two-year scientific study released today. A team of biologists from several Gulf of Mexico institutions and the University of Central Florida in Orlando published their findings in the journal PLoS ONE. For the past two years, scientists have been trying to figure out why there were a high number of dolphin deaths, part of what’s called an “unusual mortality event” along the northern Gulf of Mexico. Most troubling to scientists was the exceptionally high number of young dolphins that made up close to half of the 186 dolphins that washed ashore from Louisiana to western Florida from January to April 2010.
The number of “perinatal” (near birth) dolphins stranded during this four-month period was six times higher than the average number of perinatal strandings in the region since 2003 and nearly double the historical percentage of all strandings. “Unfortunately it was a ‘perfect storm’ that led to the dolphin deaths,” said Graham Worthy, a UCF provosts distinguished professor of biology and co-author of the study. “The oil spill and cold winter of 2010 had already put significant stress on their food resources, resulting in poor body condition and depressed immune response. It appears the high volumes of cold freshwater coming from snowmelt water that pushed through Mobile Bay and Mississippi Sound in 2011 was the final blow.”
The cold winter of 2010 was followed by the historic BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in April 2011, which dumped millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, likely disrupting the food chain. This was in the middle of the dolphins’ breeding season. A sudden entry of high volumes of cold freshwater from Mobile Bay in 2011 imposed additional stress on the ecosystem and specifically on dolphins that were already in poor body condition.
“When we put the pieces together, it appears that the dolphins were likely weakened by depleted food resources, bacteria, or other factors as a result of the 2010 cold winter or oil spill, which made them susceptible to assault by the high volumes of cold freshwater coming from land in 2011 and resulted in distinct patterns in when and where they washed ashore,” said Ruth Carmichael, a senior marine scientist at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, an assistant professor of Marine Sciences at the University of South Alabama and the lead author of the study. The majority of perinatal strandings were centered on the Mississippi-Alabama coast, adjacent to Mobile Bay, the 4th largest freshwater drainage in the U.S.
The onshore movement of surface currents during the same period resulted in animals washing ashore along the stretch of coastline where freshwater discharge was most intense. Others who contributed to the study include: William M. Graham and Stephan Howden from the University of Southern Mississippi, Stennis Space Center and Allen Aven from the Dauphin Island Sea Lab and the University of South Alabama. Worthy is the Hubbs Professor of Marine Mammalogy. He received his PhD in 1986 from the University of Guelph in Canada and then completed post-doctoral training at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he studied elephant seals, bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions. He spent 11 years as a faculty member in the Department of Marine Biology at Texas A&M University at Galveston and served as the State Coordinator for the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network.
Worthy and his team at UCF have been studying dolphin populations in the Pensacola and Choctawhatchee bays for years.
Journal reference: PLoS ONE search and more info website Provided by University of Central Florida search and more info website
If sustainable development is genuinely to be pursued at Rio+20 and beyond, we need to recapture nature from the market’s grasp, nurturing and legitimising more interconnected human-ecological relationships and understandings, along with tried-and-tested forms of local ecosystem stewardship based on them.
‘Green grabbing’ – the rapidly-growing appropriation of land and resources in the name of ‘green ‘ biofuels, carbon offsetting schemes, conservation efforts and eco-tourism initiatives – is forcing people from their homelands and increasing poverty, new research has found.
Ecosystems being ‘asset-stripped’ for profit is likely to cause dispossession and further poverty amongst already-poor land and resource users, according to a set of 17 new research case studies from Africa, Asia and Latin America, published in a special issue of the Journal of Peasant Studies.
“Green grabs are the dark side of the green economy,” said Professor Melissa Leach, director of the ESRC STEPS Centre. “If market-based mechanisms are to contribute to sustainable development and the building of economies that are not only green but also fair, then fostering an agenda focused on distribution, equity and justice in green market arrangements is vital.”
This means including meaningful local engagement and consultation based on transparency, accountability and free, prior informed consent. Yet green markets cannot do it all. In the rush to repair a damaged nature through trading and offset schemes, the political-economic structures that caused the damage in the first place must not be neglected.
Responsibility for tackling unsustainable practices in wealthy industrialised settings should not be offloaded by financialising ecosystems in other parts of the world.
And if sustainable development is genuinely to be pursued at Rio+20 and beyond, we need to recapture nature from the market’s grasp, nurturing and legitimising more interconnected human-ecological relationships and understandings, along with tried-and-tested forms of local ecosystem stewardship based on them.
Examples of green grabs include: in Guatemala, conservation agencies, ecotourism companies and the military are ‘protecting’ the Guatemalan Maya Biosphere Reserve as a ‘Maya-themed vacationland’, violently excluding local people.
In Eastern and Southern Africa, businesses are revaluing soil systems and farming practices for ‘biochar’, dispossessing farmers and pastoralists from land and resources important for their livelihoods.
Meanwhile evidence is mounting that some Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD and REDD+) schemes are dispossessing local forest users of vital resource access.
This shows deforestation around the dry Chaco of Paraguay from 2004-2011. Credit: http://www.terra-i.org/Karolina Argote/Louis Reymondin.
An international team of researchers in Colombia, the UK, USA and Switzerland have developed the first ever system to monitor deforestation across Latin America in near real-time using satellite data. Preliminary results from the new system reveal that in parts of Colombia, deforestation has increased by 340 per cent since 2004; and over a million hectares of forest have been lost in the Gran Chaco region of Paraguay.
The new satellite system, known as Terra-i, is being launched this week in time for the Rio+20 UN environment conference, and is soon to be expanded to cover all tropical regions. Although Brazil has had a sophisticated near real-time deforestation monitoring system in place since 2008, until now there has been no equivalent for the rest of Latin America.
Terra-i has been developed to monitor changes land cover every 16 days and for every 250 metres on the ground, in order to help national governments, conservation organisations and those implementing climate-related policy to assess recent trends in deforestation and emerging hotspots of change.
The system uses data supplied by NASA’s MODIS satellite sensor and is the result of collaboration between the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Colombia, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in the USA and South America, the School of Engineering and Management of Vaud (HEIG-VD) in Switzerland and King’s College London.
Deforestation can lead to widespread loss of biodiversity and also impacts the ‘ecosystem services’ that foster a stable climate and secure freshwater supplies. However, in many parts of the world the scale and pattern of deforestation is infrequently and inconsistently monitored and this makes management of change very difficult.
Huge volumes of data need to be processed to detect land cover change at a 250m spatial resolution every 16 days. Moreover, separating real human-induced changes, such as deforestation, from changes brought about by natural seasonality and by droughts, floods or persistent cloud cover, has made the development of an operational monitoring system a real challenge.
The availability of MODIS imagery means that assessment of land cover change can be made in a geographically consistent manner between countries and also updated frequently.
The development of the Terra-i system was led Louis Reymondin, PhD student in the Department of Geography at King’s College London, supervised by Dr Mark Mulligan, in collaboration with CIAT and HEIG-VD and funded by TNC.
‘We developed a computational neural network and ‘trained’ it with data from 2000-2004 to recognise the normal changes in vegetation greenness due to seasonal variation in rainfall in different areas,’ said Dr Mulligan, who is attending the Rio+20 conference this week.
‘The network now recognises where and when greenness suddenly changes well beyond these normal limits as a result of deforestation. The system runs on data for every 250 square metres of land from Mexico to Argentina shortly after the data comes in from MODIS and highlights every 16 days the pixels that significantly change, writing these results to Google Maps for easy visualisation,’ he said.
Preliminary data from Terra-i show that in Caqueta, Colombia for example, deforestation grew from around 4,880 hectares in 2004 to 21,440 in 2011, up by 340 per cent. Deforestation has grown significantly in the buffer zones of the Chiribiquete National Park where deforestation rates increased by 196 per cent from 2010 to 2011.
The Gran Chaco in Paraguay is the second largest forested area in South America. Terra-i found that between 2004 and 2010, over a million hectares of this area was deforested with a peak in 2009 of 454,700 hectares.
‘As we approach Rio+20 in which the world will define the targets that will guide us along the road to a more sustainable development, it is critical that we deploy the appropriate tools to carefully monitor and manage our landscapes,’ said Dr Mulligan.
‘We need to ensure that we maintain enough farmland to feed the nine billion to come but we must also have protected natural landscapes that provide clean water, a stable climate, a refuge for biodiversity and space for increasingly urbanised populations to experience and appreciate the wonders of nature.
‘Achieving the right balance between intelligently intensive agriculture and protected natural environments across the world will be fundamental to achieving truly sustainable development and requires sophisticated, geographically detailed and timely tools such as Terra-i to support appropriate policy and decision-making’.
In an effort to save the dwindling honeybee population researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas are looking to viruses to help treat one of the most destructive and widespread bee brood diseases in the United States. They report their findings at the 2012 General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.
“Our food supply depends on the actions of millions of insects such as the common honeybee. Due to the importance of honeybees a pollinators in the agriculture of the United States and therefore the current and future food supply, honeybee health is of great concern,” says Diane Yost, a researcher on the study.
American Foulbrood Disease (AFD) is the most widespread and destructive brood disease affecting honeybees. It is caused by a bacterial pathogen, Paenibacillus larvae. Young honeybee larvae become infected when they ingest the bacterial spores in their food. Infected larvae normally die after their cells are sealed. The bacteria eventually die as well but not before producing millions of spores.
While there are some chemical treatments that can be used to hold AFD in check they must be continued indefinitely. Once the treatment is suspended the American foulbrood spores germinate successfully again leading to a disease outbreak. Because the spores can survive up to 40 years, many states require diseased hives to be burned completely.
Yost and her colleagues are researching an alternative treatment for AFD. They are focusing on using bacteriophages, viruses that infect and kill specific bacteria, to target the bacteria responsible for AFD and eventually treat the disease.
“If an effective remedy for the disease could be developed, hives that are infected with the pathogen could be treated rather than burned, which is currently the only effective treatment,” says Yost.
The researchers conducted an extensive search for phage from environmental sources including samples from desert and garden soils, beehives, flowers, compost and cosmetics containing beeswax.
Nearly 100 samples were tested for the presence of phages. A total of 31 phages were isolated and each were subsequently tested against 8 different strains of the AFD pathogen. The researchers identified 3 phages that had activity against all 8 strains of the bacteria.
“These results demonstrate that bacteriophages capable of infecting P. larvae are present in the natural environment, and these phages may represent the first step in developing a potential treatment for AFD,” says Yost.
Using studies that span the last three decades, scientists at UC Santa Barbara have compiled the first evidence-based comprehensive study of the potential for tsunamis in Northwestern California. The paper, “Paleoseismicity of the Southern End of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, Northwestern California,” was co-written by professors Edward Keller and Alexander Simms from UCSB’s Department of Earth Science, and published in a recent issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.
The paper is based on the Ph.D. dissertation of David Valentine, a research programmer at the Spatial Information Systems Laboratory at UC San Diego. Valentine, Keller’s former student, completed his doctorate at UCSB in 2002 and is first author of the paper.
The region has long been known to experience large earthquakes, and scientific studies of seismic activity in the southern end of the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) – which stretches northward from the area of Mendocino, Calif. – have previously appeared in grey literature and in guidebooks. However, comprehensive, reviewed evidence-based work has been lacking, according to Keller.
“Science goes on evidence,” he said, adding that in light of the recent earthquakes in Japan and Chile, the study of the same potential closer to home is “timely.” The authors studied sedimentation patterns in salt marshes, floodplains, and estuaries in the northwestern corner of California for signs of seismic events that could lead to tsunami activity. They combined this with information gathered from numerous studies conducted over nearly 30 years by researchers at Humboldt State University
During an earthquake, the researchers say, there is a tendency for the coastal wetlands to become submerged, with coastal sediments depositing over plants and animals that live there. These become a fossilized record of sea-level change in the area.
The process has preserved a sequence of marsh surfaces and forest soils. Analysis of structure, texture, and organic content, as well as the use of radiocarbon dating to identify the age of the materials, revealed evidence of smaller strong-to-major earthquakes in the area (magnitude 6.5 to 7.2). Larger quakes (greater than magnitude 8.2) that involved the regional subduction zone, were also in evidence.
According to the study, the local California section has experienced three major earthquakes over the last 2000 years, and accompanying local sea-level changes at roughly 300- to 400-year intervals, with the last one occurring 500 to 600 years ago. The researchers also found that the entire CSZ erupted, causing local submergence at least three times in roughly 500- to 600- year intervals, the last activity taking place in 1700 AD.
“It’s not a matter of if, but when,” said Keller, of the potential for the next major earthquake/tsunami event in the region – a great earthquake that would impact not only the Northwest, but also send waves to Japan and Hawaii. The evidence, he said, is leading to far more foresight and planning along the impact areas in the region to avoid catastrophes on a level with the Japan earthquake of 2011 or the Indian Ocean quake of 2004.
Other researchers contributing to the study include Gary Carver, a professor emeritus at Humboldt State University; Wen Hao Li from Northrup Grummond Co. in Redondo Beach; and Christine Manhart from Environmental Services and Consulting in Blacksburg, Va.
Bulgaria’s parliament passed a new waste management law Thursday meant to bring the country into line with European Union rules and avoid the looming threat of non-compliance fines.
The law had been stalled in parliament for a year because of strong opposition from recycled metal dealers.
Bulgaria has more than 2,000 scrap-metal buyers who are rarely forced to show the required “certificate of origin” for their wares — enabling a thriving trade in stolen rails, road signs and electric lines.
Local media often carry reports of youths, mainly Roma, who die stealing high-voltage power lines.
Under the new law, recycled metal dealers must apply for new licenses and set up shop in locations authorised and monitored by local authorities. Only electronic payment will be allowed.
The law also requires towns to recycle at least 50 percent of household waste by 2020, a big change for a country that recycles little of its rubbish other than metals.
Environment Minister Nona Karadjova said she was confident the law would allow Bulgaria to escape European Commission fines despite being adopted well after the EU’s December 2010 deadline for countries to comply with new waste management regulations.
The EU rules require countries to legislate regulations such as the “polluter pays” principle and implement policies to reduce, reuse and recycle much of their waste.
Related Links Our Polluted World and Cleaning It Up
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As many as 300,000 PCs and Macs will drop off the Internet in about 65 hours unless their owners heed last-minute calls to scrub their machines of malware.
According to a group of security experts formed to combat DNSChanger, between a quarter-million and 300,000 computers, perhaps many more, were still infected as of July 2.
DNSChanger hijacked users’ clicks by modifying their computers’ domain name system (DNS) settings to send URL requests to the criminals’ own servers, a tactic that shunted victims to hacker-created sites that resembled real domains.
At one point, as many as 4 million PCs and Macs were infected with the malware, which earned its makers $14 million, U.S. federal authorities have said.
Infected machines will lose their link to the Internet at 12:01 a.m. ET Monday, July 9, when replacement DNS servers go dark.
The servers, which have been maintained under a federal court order by Internet Systems Consortium (ISC), the non-profit group that maintains the popular BIND DNS open-source software, were deployed last year after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) seized more than 100 command-and-control (C&C) systems during the take-down of the hacker gang responsible for DNSChanger.
The FBI’s “Operation Ghost Click” ended with arrests of six Estonian men — a seventh, a Russian, remains at large — the C&C seizures, and the substitution of the replacement servers. Without the substitutes, DNSChanger-infected systems would have been immediately knocked off the Internet.
It’s not just consumer PCs and Macs — DNSChanger was equal-opportunity malware — that remain infected, but also corporate computers and systems at government agencies, said Tacoma, Wash.-based Internet Identity (IID), which has been monitoring cleanup efforts.
Last week, IID said that its scans showed 12% of Fortune 500 firms, or about one out of every eight, harbored DNSChanger-compromised computers or routers. And two out of 55 scanned U.S. government departments or agencies — or 3.6% — also had failed to scrub all their PCs and Macs.
The newest numbers were down from earlier scans by IID. In March, for example, the company pegged the Fortune 500 DNSChanger infection rate at 19% and the government agency rate at 9%.
MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom’s lawyers appeared in Auckland High Court this week, seeking relief and reparation from the government over what has been deemed an illegal search and seizure of Dotcom’s property.
Last week chief High Court judge Justice Helen Winkelmann ruled that the police search of Dotcom’s rented Auckland mansion and the seizure of property there, including data shipped offshore to the U.S., was illegal.
Davison says the amount of the compensation being sought has not been discussed yet, but adds that his client wants access to the data and computers seized to assist his defense.
Justice Winkelmann clarified for the court that Dotcom is not seeking to exclude evidence seized from future proceedings.
Dotcom and co-accused Finn Batato and Mathias Ortmann were present in court.
Meanwhile The New Zealand Herald has reported that Dotcom is claiming that the shutdown of MegaUpload was ordered by the White House after Hollywood studio executives met with U.S. vice president Joe Biden. Publicly available White House logs show Biden met with a number of Hollywood executives and the Motion Picture Association’s Asia Pacific managing director Mike Ellis.
According to the report, Ellis met with former New Zealand justice minister Simon Power in March last year.
We’ve all Googled ourselves from time to time, but British Airways has crossed the creepy line for looking up its own passengers on Google Image Search.
The airline is rolling out a new program, called “Know Me,” that tries to improve passenger recognition through Google search and other methods. British Airways will create “dossiers” on passengers, and will use the profile data to offer 4500 “personal recognition messages” by the end of the year, the London Evening Standard reports.
For instance, flight attendants may reference Google image results to greet a high-profile, first class passenger when he or she boards the plane. British Airways will also dig into its own passenger data, so if a regular customer experienced a delay on a previous flight, airline staff can offer a personal apology.
Not surprisingly, some privacy advocates are upset. “Since when has buying a flight ticket meant giving your airline permission to start hunting for information about you on the Internet?” Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch, told the Standard.
Privacy advocates this week said they are dismayed, but not surprised about a New York Criminal Court judge’s decision ordering Twitter to hand over all the data it has on an Occupy Wall Street protester being investigated for disorderly conduct.
In an 11-page ruling, Judge Matthew Sciarrino denied Twitter’s motion to quash a subpoena from New York City prosecutors seeking the deleted tweets, email addresses, IP address and other information of Twitter user Malcolm Harris, who was arrested last year in connection with the New York OWS protests.
The ruling marked the second time the same court has rejected arguments that the data being sought by prosecutors is constitutionally protected and can only be obtained via a search warrant. Harris had earlier sought to quash the subpoena.
The court rejected Harris’ claims because the data sought by prosecutors belonged to Twitter, not him. The court asserted that Harris therefore had no standing to challenge the subpoena.
In filing its motion to quash the subpoena, Twitter contended that under its terms of service, the data belonged to Harris.
Twitter argued that taking away Harris’ ability to challenge the subpoena unfairly puts the onus on Twitter to legally defend its users rights.
Twitter and Harris both contended the data being sought was protected under Fourth Amendment prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure. Thus, Twitter maintained that prosecutors needed to obtain a search warrant before they could ask for the data to be handed over.
In dismissing the arguments, Judge Sciarrino held that the Fourth Amendment didn’t apply in this case because there would be no physical intrusion into Harris’ Twitter account.
“If you post a tweet, just like if you scream it out the window, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. There is no proprietary interest in your tweets, which you have now gifted to the world,” he wrote.
Tweeting is very different from a private mail, private chat or other forms of private online communications, Sciarrino wrote.
“Those private dialogues would require a warrant based on probable cause in order to access the relevant information. ” The same is not true of public tweets, he noted.
The ruling elicited predictable groans from privacy rights groups. “We think the judge missed the point on the privacy analysis,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).
“It’s one thing for the police to overhear a person shout an incriminating statement. We agree there would be no expectation of privacy” in those situations, Rotenberg said. “But when the police go to a communications service provider and demand that the company turn over records of a customer, that is a very different scenario.”
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An Illinois beekeeper whose bee hives were stolen and allegedly destroyed by the Illinois Department of Agriculture has stirred up a hornet’s nest with his questions on why the state did this, and most importantly, what they did with his bees.
The state claims the bees were destroyed because they were infected with a disease called foulbrood.
But when the 58-year apiary keeper had his hearing—three weeks after the removal of his bees without his knowledge—the state’s “evidence” had disappeared, leaving more questions than answers about the raid on the beekeeper’s hives.
Some people, including the beekeeper, Terrence Ingram, suspect the raid has more to do with Ingram’s 15 years of research on Monsanto’s Roundup and his documented evidence that Roundup kills bees, than it does about any concerns about his hives.
Interestingly, the state’s theft targeted the queen bee and hive he’d been using to conduct the research.
The Ingram Case
A recent article by Tom Kocal in the Prairie Advocate retells the full story of how Terrence Ingram’s bees and hives wound up being taken by the Illinois State Department of Agriculture (IDofAG)i.
While the state claims the removal of the property was due to Ingram’s failure to comply with the Department’s notice instructing him to burn the affected hives, they have been less than open about why the inspectors came in and took the bees and hives without due process.
At a time when the Ingram’s were absent from the property. Ingram claims the Department also conducted three out of four inspections on his private property while no one was home.
While Department inspectors claim his hives had foulbrood—an allegedly highly contagious disease—Mr. Ingram believes he could prove that this was not the case. As reported by the featured Prairie Advocate article:
“Ingram knew that the inspectors could not tell what they were seeing and had warned the Department that if any of them came back it would be considered a criminal trespass. Yet they came back when he was not home, stole his hives and ruined his 15 years of research.”
Ingram initially reported the missing bees and hives as having been stolen on March 14, unaware that they’d been removed by the IDofAG. News of the theft was published in the Prairie Advocate on March 21.
As a result of that article, an area County Farm Bureau manager called the reporter, stating he knew the equipment hadn’t been stolen, but that it had been “destroyed” by the Department of Agriculture because they were infected with foulbrood and Ingram hadn’t disposed of them as instructed.
The most nonsensical part of this story is that Ingram didn’t get a hearing to determine whether his hives were affected by the disease until three weeks after they were removed and destroyed.
Kocal quotes Mr. Ingram as saying:
“I own four businesses. I am here all the time. Yet they took our bees and hives when we were not home. What did they do, sit up on the hill and watch until we left? We had not yet had our day in court to prove that our hives did not have foulbrood!”
Making matters worse, during that April 4 hearing, the Department couldn’t produce any evidence of what they’d done with the bees and the hives. Meanwhile, Ingram ended up being ordered to pay the $500 fine for violating Sections 2-1 of the Illinois Bees and Apiaries Act. According to Kocal:
“There are 2 questions that Ingram wants answered:
1) Did the IDofA, a state agency, have the right to enter Ingram’s property and confiscate a suspected “nuisance,” before Ingram had his day in court?
2) Where are his bees? The “evidence” has disappeared, and the IDofA refuses to tell Ingram where they are, before, during, and after the hearing.
”I have been keeping bees for 58 years,” Ingram said during an interview at his home and apiary. “I am not a newcomer to beekeeping, and I definitely know what I am doing. I have been teaching beginning beekeeping classes for 40 years…” At the April 4 hearing, Ingram said he felt he was able to show the court that the inspector could not tell the difference between “chilled brood” and foulbrood. He also proved to the court that the inspectors did not know the symptoms of foulbrood.”
15 Years of Research Destroyed
Ingram believes the destruction of his bees and hives is more likely to be related to his research into the effect of Roundup on honey bees. He claims some 250 of his colonies have been killed off over the years by Monsanto’s broad-spectrum herbicide, used in large quantities on both conventional- and genetically engineered crops. Ingram’s research shows that Roundup can lead to what’s called chilled brood, which is an entirely different scenario.
According to Ingram, quoted from Kocal’s article:
”When Round-Up kills the adult bees there are not enough bees left in the hive to keep the young bees (brood) warm, and the young bees die from the cold (chilled brood). I tried to prove that just because foulbrood can be detected once the hive has been disturbed, doesn’t mean the hive has foulbrood.
Inside a honeybee hive is one of the cleanest places you can find. Anything that is a problem, if the bees can’t remove it, they cover it with propolis, which is an antiseptic… When you go into the comb and cut it up, disturb it like the investigators did, then send it to a lab, it exposes foulbrood to the world. In the beehive, it’s covered up. The bees aren’t affected by it. But you can find it by sending it in to a lab.”
Ingram has studied the effects of Roundup on honeybees for the past 15 years, and he believes he had built up sufficient amount of data to show that the herbicide causes not just bee die-offs, but also Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)—a mysterious phenomenon that has decimated an estimated one-third of all honey bees since 2006. While some bees inexplicably die, many simply vanish and never return to their hives. Ingram told Kocal that:
“CCD is a calamity that is affecting honeybee colonies across the nation. In fact, I had one queen, which had survived three summers of spraying and three winters. I was planning to raise daughters from that queen to see if she may have had some genetic resistance to Roundup. But she and her hive were taken during the theft. I don’t even know where the bees and my equipment are. They ruined 15 years of my research.”
… “I asked Rep. Sacia to take the teeth out of the current law, preventing untrained inspectors from doing sneak inspections without the beekeeper present, killing their bees and burning their equipment, or forcing organic beekeepers out of business, telling them that they have to use chemicals to keep bees in Illinois. Are the chemical companies really running our food supply?”
… “Is Illinois becoming a police state, where citizens do not have rights?” Ingram asked in desperation. “Knowing that Monsanto and the Dept. of Ag are in bed together, one has to wonder if Monsanto was behind the theft to ruin my research that may prove Roundup was, and is, killing honeybees. Beekeepers across the state are being threatened that the same thing may be done to their hives and livelihood. I was not treated properly, I don’t want to see this happen to anyone else in this state, and I want this type of illegal action to end.”
Monsanto is the New Owner of Leading Bee Research Firm
Ingram is quite correct about chemical companies like Monsanto—they are seeking to take nearly full control of the food supply by controlling virtually every aspect of crop production. So he has cause to be suspicious when it comes to the question of who ordered the theft and destruction of his bees. It wouldn’t be the first time the biotech giant has used questionable tactics to get rid of its adversaries. And research implicating Monsanto as the cause of CCD could definitely cause some harm to the company’s bottom line.
One of the forerunning theories of colony collapse disorder (CCD) is that it’s being caused by genetically engineered crops—either as a result of the crops themselves or the pesticides and herbicides applied on them, such as Roundup. Ingram’s research could potentially have strengthened this theory. Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide is one of the most widely used herbicides there is. As a result, Monsanto has received increasing amounts of bad publicity over their potential role in the devastating demise of bees around the globe.
There’s no doubt that CCD is a serious problem. To get an idea of the magnitude of the importance of bees, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) estimates that without bees to act as pollinators, the United States alone could lose $15 billion worth of crops.ii Research into the phenomenon is therefore absolutely crucial, to identify the sources of the problem.
Monsanto however, keeping true to form, appears to have taken measures to control the direction of the research into their products’ effect on bees. As I recently reported, Monsanto has purchased one of the leading bee research firms – one that, conveniently, lists its primary goal as studying colony collapse disorder! Monsanto bought the company, called Beeologics, in September 2011, just months before Poland announced it would ban growing of Monsanto’s genetically modified MON810 maize, noting, poignantly, that “pollen of this strain could have a harmful effect on bees.”iii
The ongoing blight of genetically engineered crops has been implicated in CCD for years. In one German study,iv when bees were released in a genetically engineered rapeseed crop, then fed the pollen to younger bees, scientists discovered the bacteria in the guts of the young ones mirrored the same genetic traits as ones found in the GE crop, indicating that horizontal gene transfer had occurred.
But Roundup is not the only herbicide that has come under scrutiny. Newer systemic insecticides, known as neonicotinoids, two prominent examples of which include Imidacloprid and Clothianidin, are also frequently used on both conventional- and genetically engineered crops and have been implicated in CCD. In fact, bee colonies started disappearing in the U.S. shortly after the EPA allowed these new insecticides on the market. Even the EPA itself admits that “pesticide poisoning” is a likely cause of bee colony collapse as these pesticides weaken the bees’ immune system.
What Can You do to Help the Honeybees?
If you want to learn more about bees and CCD, I highly recommend watching the documentary film Vanishing of the Bees. The film recommends four actions you can take to help preserve honeybees everywhere:
Support organic farmers and shop at local farmer’s markets as often as possible. You can “vote with your fork” three times a day. [When you buy organic, you are making a statement by saying "no" to genetically engineered foods]
Cut the use of toxic chemicals in your house and on your lawn, and use organic pest control.
Better yet, get rid of your lawn altogether and plant a garden. Lawns offer very little benefit for the environment. Both flower and vegetable gardens provide good honey bee habitats.
Become an amateur beekeeper. Having a hive in your garden requires only about an hour of your time per week, benefits your local ecosystem, and you can enjoy your own honey!
If you are interested in more information about bee preservation, the following organizations are a good place to start.
Pesticide Action Network Bee Campaignv
The Foundation for the Preservation of Honey Beesvi
Hard lessons have produced a range of creative policy tools to ensure that wells do not inadvertently deplete stream-flow, or damage connected ecosystems, while minimizing economic disruption to those who often rely on groundwater during droughts.
Hard lessons from around the American West and Australia could help improve groundwater management and protect ecosystems in California, Stanford University researchers find. The Water in the West program at Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment is focusing attention on how groundwater pumping can threaten rivers and ecosystems and, conversely, how creative groundwater management can be a savior during drought.
The program recently released the report, “Instituting Integration,” that explores the ways that various American and Australian states and water districts manage and regulate connections between groundwater and surface waters and ecosystems such as rivers, streams, springs and wetlands.
“In many places, over-pumping of groundwater reduces surface-water flows,” said report author Rebecca Nelson. “Failing to recognize and address these fundamental connections can place other water users like farmers and cities at risk and can harm fisheries or wetland habitats of migratory waterfowl.”
Many jurisdictions manage and regulate surface water and groundwater without any recognition of the connections. For instance, California has no legal framework for comprehensively managing the impacts of groundwater pumping.
Across most of California, well owners can pump as much as they like with little accountability for the impacts on rivers, other water users and ecosystems.
In contrast, other states around the West have developed laws and policies for controlling the impacts of wells on rivers. Australia has gone even further, considering how ecosystems of all kinds are affected by groundwater pumping.
“We have only recently developed the science necessary to understand the extent of this problem,” Nelson said. “Now we need to move on to thinking about the law and policy tools we need to deal with this issue. On that score, California is at the rear of the pack.”
Stanford researchers have been learning from states throughout the western U.S. and Australia that are dealing with common issues of water scarcity, increasing competition for water, greater reliance on groundwater and fragile ecosystems.
Hard lessons have produced a range of creative policy tools to ensure that wells do not inadvertently deplete stream-flow, or damage connected ecosystems, while minimizing economic disruption to those who often rely on groundwater during droughts.
Some western states, which face stressed basins and drying rivers, cap groundwater pumping in high-use areas. New wells are permitted when well owners are able to offset their pumping by conserving water or buying and retiring other water rights.
Across the Pacific, a decade-long drought ravaged many river ecosystems in Australia but until recently, little attention was paid to the importance of groundwater to those systems.
Now, Australian scientists are preparing to release the country’s first national map of groundwater-dependent ecosystems. The map will help decision makers when they consider applications for new wells and formulate new water plans designed to protect these ecosystems into the future.
The Stanford Woods Institute’s Water in the West program is collaborating with the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Center to gather groundwater experts from around the western United States and Australia for a workshop later this month focused on promising groundwater policy solutions to common challenges and the wisdom of hard groundwater management lessons. Related Information: “Instituting Integration”
“We’ve managed to show that the vegetation changes in our fixed plots are a result of local warming at numerous sites across the world’s tundra,” Robert Bjork says. Credit: Photo: Ulf Molau och Robert G. Bjork.
Recent years’ warming in the Arctic has caused local changes in vegetation, reveals new research by biologists from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and elsewhere published in the prestigious journals Nature Climate Change and Ecology Letters. The results show that most plants in the Arctic have grown taller, and the proportion of bare ground has decreased. Above all, there has been an increase in evergreen shrubs.
“We’ve managed to link the vegetation changes observed at the different sites to the degree of local warming,” explains researcher and biologist Robert Bjork from the University of Gothenburg.
Shrubs and plants more widespread Comparisons show that the prevalence of vascular species, such as shrubs and plants, is increasing as temperatures rise. The degree of change depends on climate zone, soil moisture and the presence of permafrost.
Researchers working on the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX) have been gathering data for almost 30 years. By analysing changes in vegetation in 158 plant communities at 46 locations across the Arctic between 1980 and 2010, they have been able to identify a number of general trends.
“We’ve managed to show that the vegetation changes in our fixed plots are a result of local warming at numerous sites across the world’s tundra,” Robert Bjork says.
Summer temperatures and soil moisture implicated ITEX was started up in the USA in 1990 when agreement was reached on a joint manual with standardised protocols which have since been used throughout the Ar
“The response of different plant groups to rising temperatures often varied with summer ambient temperature, soil moisture content and experimental duration, with shrubs expanding with warming only where the ambient temperature was already high, and grasses expanding mostly in the coldest areas studied,” explains Ulf Molau, professor of plant ecology at the University of Gothenburg and for many years a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Major changes The results indicate strong regional variation in the response of tundra vegetation to rising temperatures.
“This means that particularly sensitive regions following the combined effects of long-term warming in the Arctic may see much greater changes than we have observed to date,” Ulf Molau says.
This is a timely insight now that Sweden, as chair of the Arctic Council in 2011-13, has prime responsibility for producing the Arctic Resilience Report. Experience from ITEX will also be used in the next IPCC assessment report in 2014.
Researchers sampled this beach, at Belleair Boulevard on Dauphin Island, Ala., prior to and several months following shoreline oiling from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and found significant changes in microbial communities. Credit: Holly Bik.
Communities of microbial organisms – species such as nematodes, protists and fungi – on beaches along the Gulf of Mexico changed significantly following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in April 2010, research from the University of New Hampshire’s Hubbard Center for Genome Studies (HCGS) and partners found. The findings, which analyzed marine sediments from five Gulf Coast sites prior to and several months following shoreline oiling, are published in the June 6, 2012, issue of the journal PLoS ONE.
The researchers sampled sites around Dauphin Island, Ala., and Grand Isle, La., just after the Deepwater Horizon spill began but before oil reached the shore, then again several months later, in September 2010.
“In that short time period, we saw a drastic change in the microbial community,” says lead author Holly Bik, a postdoctoral researcher at UNH’s HCGS when the research was conducted, now at the Genome Center at the University of California, Davis. “We were shocked at how drastic the change was, pre- and post-spill.”
Bik and senior author W. Kelley Thomas, director of the HCGS, as well as collaborators from Auburn University and the University of Texas, San Antonio, found that the communities of microbial eukaryotes (organisms not visible to the naked eye whose cells contain nuclei) in the sediments shifted dramatically from highly diverse communities dominated by nematodes – “what you would expect on a beach,” says Bik – to an almost exclusively fungal community.
What’s more, those post-spill fungi seem to have an appetite for oil. “The fungal taxa that were there were previously associated with hydrocarbons,” Bik says, noting that the group of fungi sampled post-spill from the Grand Isle sites are suspected to utilize hydrocarbons and thrive in hostile, polluted conditions that appear to be intolerable for other marine fungi.
The researchers used two parallel methodologies – high-throughput gene sequencing to sort the organisms into “piles” by their DNA, and an under-the-microscope taxonomic approach – to evaluate the communities pre- and post-spill.
In the taxonomic data examining nematodes, researchers found that the post-spill samples were dominated by more predatory and scavenger nematodes as well as juveniles, suggesting.
While nematodes and fungi are hardly charismatic and are unlikely to turn up on the dinner table, these little-understood yet abundant organisms are nonetheless important.
“They underpin the entire ecosystem,” Bik says. “If you knock out the base of the food pyramid, you’re not going to have food higher up in the food chain.” Further, they are also important for nutrient cycling and sediment stability.
The researchers’ findings also point to the possibility of lingering but hidden effects of the spill, which is the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry.
“If you turned up at the beach in September and looked around, you would have had no idea there was an oil spill,” Bik says. “Yet our data suggest considerable hidden initial impacts across shallow Gulf sediments that may be ongoing.”
Ongoing research and sampling will aim to determine whether fungi are thriving and persisting long-term and whether the shift in communities is an ephemeral, seasonal or a more permanent phenomenon.
The use of high-throughput sequencing approaches to characterize changes in microscopic eukaryote communities is a cutting-edge technique for tracking environmental disturbance.
“The development of these genomic tools provides a detailed understanding of the biological consequences of such environmental disasters and is the first step toward mindful approaches for mitigation and remediation of this oil spill and those we will face in the future,” says Thomas, who is the Hubbard Professor of Genomics at UNH.
In addition to Bik and Thomas, co-authors were Kenneth Halanych from Auburn University and Jyotsna Sharma of University of Texas, San Antonio. This research, which is ongoing, was funded through the National Science Foundation’s RAPID program for quick-response research on natural human-caused disasters and similar unanticipated events. More information about the grant is available here.
Scientists from three renowned sustainability institutes – the STEPS Centre, Stockholm Resilience Centre and Tellus Institute – argue in Transforming Innovation for Sustainability that technological solutions appearing optimal from a global perspective rarely prove viable across all localities, condemning many international initiatives to failure. A radical new approach is urgently needed, linking the direction, diversity and distribution of innovation.
The targets, indicators and approaches being used to pursue progress towards sustainable development at Rio+20 are counter-productive, say scientists in a new paper. Three renowned sustainability institutes – the STEPS Centre, Stockholm Resilience Centre and Tellus Institute – argue in Transforming Innovation for Sustainability that global and grassroots innovations must be connected to avoid breaching planetary boundaries and reversing progress on poverty reduction.
The targets, indicators and approaches being used to pursue progress towards sustainable development at Rio+20 are counter-productive, say scientists in a new paper.
Goals focussing on one-track scientific solutions to the most urgent sustainability problems fail to respond to the uncertainty and shifting dynamics of today’s world. These one-direction approaches risk breaching the already weakened planetary boundaries which define a safe operating space for humanity, while undoing past progress on global poverty reduction.
Instead, sustainable futures should be plotted on a landscape of multiple possibilities – with their directions confined by planetary boundaries. By allowing diverse types of science and innovation to co-exist, the potential for resilient solutions responding to people’s varied social, economic and ecological needs would increase.
Distribution – who gains and who loses from particular policies and innovations – is also critical. Fostering grassroots innovations would help to prioritise the interests of the most marginal groups.
Scientists from three renowned sustainability institutes – the STEPS Centre, Stockholm Resilience Centre and Tellus Institute – argue in Transforming Innovation for Sustainability that technological solutions appearing optimal from a global perspective rarely prove viable across all localities, condemning many international initiatives to failure. A radical new approach is urgently needed, linking the direction, diversity and distribution of innovation.
“Science, technology and innovation can help avert catastrophic developmental and environmental damage. But only if we move beyond outdated notions of whose innovation counts, to empower the vital contributions of poorer people’s own creativity in building green and fair economies and contributing to resilient socio-techno-ecological systems,” said Professor Melissa Leach, director of the STEPS Centre.
“Until the connection is made between global and grassroots innovation, the chances of steering away from potential earth system thresholds and keeping global societies within a safe operating space is limited,” said Professor Johan Rockstrom, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre.
The paper offers principles to guide decision-makers and suggests a new role of ‘sustainability broker’ to help identify grassroots innovations that respond to climate, food, biodiversity and energy crises and connect them to high-level international efforts.
Some 60m euro is stolen from bank accounts in a massive cyber raid, after fraudsters raid dozens of banks around the world.
By Pete Norman, Sky News Online
Sixty million euro has been stolen from bank accounts in a massive cyber bank raid after fraudsters raided dozens of financial institutions around the world.
According to a joint report by software security firm McAfee and Guardian Analytics, more than 60 firms have suffered from what it has called an “insider level of understanding”.
“The fraudsters’ objective in these attacks is to siphon large amounts from high balance accounts, hence the name chosen for this research – Operation High Roller,” the report said.
“If all of the attempted fraud campaigns were as successful as the Netherlands example we describe in this report, the total attempted fraud could be as high as 2bn euro (£1.6bn).”
The automated malicious software program was discovered to use servers to process thousands of attempted thefts from both commercial firms and private individuals.
The stolen money was then sent to so-called mule accounts in caches of a few hundreds and 100,000 euro (£80,000) at a time.
Credit unions, large multinational banks and regional banks have all been attacked.
Sky News defence and security editor Sam Kiley said: “It does include British financial institutions and has jumped over to North America and South America.
Resume keywords are the phrases in a resume that HR screeners, recruiters, hiring managers and, most critically, Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), look for relative to a specific job opening.
And when ATSs are used, a resume that doesn’t have the right combination of keywords may never be seen by human eyes.
A resume builderIt operates behind the commercial and corporate job boards to capture and store submitted rsums.
When a resume is submitted through a job board, the content is separated and placed into the ATS. The resume loses all of its formatting and becomes plain text within the database. This is why it’s best to use a plain-text (ASCII) version of the resume when submitting through job boards, so it’s easier for the ATS to work with.
Employers sign on to the ATS and perform keyword searches. For the resume to reach human eyes, it must contain keywords matching the search criteria. When there’s a decent match, the employer can choose to view the entire rsum.
Why the resume may be ignored
Most ATS users are savvy enough to perform Boolean searches, meaning combining keywords. If the employer wants someone with project management, technology and quality assurance skills, it could use a search like this:
” ‘project management’ AND technology AND ‘quality assurance’ “
Only rsums that have all three exact search terms would be returned.
Using resume keywords
ATS systems are pretty smart. Keywords must be used in the proper context or the ATS might ignore the resume. And job seekers must use keywords throughout the resume , especially if their job search is in the technology industry.
This is where creative writing, journalism-style story structuring and career history intersect to make a spectacular resume . Not only does the resume need to satisfy the ATS for keyword searching, but it also needs to be readable and compelling for the hiring manager who calls it up in order to find out about career history and accomplishments. You can’t just pile up the keywords; you have to tell your story in a way that will make a hiring manager want to contact you, while using keywords strategically.
The ATS process, which nearly every employer requires you to follow, is why I recommend also mailing a hard copy directly to the employer — and there are ways to make that process much easier. I’ll talk about that in a later column.
Ken Moore is an internationally certified IT resume writer, former recruiter, and nationally published author. Visit his website, TheResumeBridge.com.
The Federal Communications Commission wants to reopen an inquiry into whether its regulations do enough to protect consumers from harmful radiation from cell phones.
Chairman Julius Genachowski asked fellow commissioners to give the go ahead to a new investigation, although a spokesperson says it is merely a routine review of its own policies.This is the first time that cell phone radiation guidelines would have been looked at since 1996.
Julius GenachowskiNothing is likely to change, though: the FCC says that it was confident that these levels do not need to be changed and still sufficiently protect consumers.
Whether cell phone radiation is truly harmful has been argued for almost as long as the cell phone has existed, but in recent years has become even more disputed. Last May, the World Health Organization said the devices do cause cancer, but cellular phone manufacturers say there is no serious health risk.
San Francisco went as far as to pass a law that requires cell phone retailers to post notices of the amount of radiation these phones emit, called the “specific absorption rate.” But is that really necessary at this point?
Multiple scientific reports and the manufacturers themselves indicate no conclusive evidence supports concerns that the radiation from cell phones is actually harmful. While there is evidence that this radiation does affect brain waves, researchers cannot prove that it is actually bad for us.
Other government agencies have weighed in on this topic already, with a massive study undertaken by the Food & Drug Administration in 2010 finding no increased health risk from cell phone use.
With a lack of any scientific agreement, the FCC will be hard pressed to change its rules — because the evidence doesn’t yet support it.
British researchers have found a way to power small gadgets such as GPS trackers by harvesting energy from users’ knees, potentially making batteries redundant.
Dr Pozzi is confident that the device can be improved to deliver a much greater power output. Image source: http://www.scienceomega.comKnown as the pizzicato knee-joint energy harvester, the circular device fits onto the outside of the knee and consists of an outer ring fitted with 72 plectra and a central hub with four protruding arms. With every bend of the knee the outer ring rotates, causing the plectra to pluck the arms.
This results in the arms vibrating, much like a guitar string, and generating electrical energy, which can then be used to charge devices. The researchers from Cranfield University, the University of Liverpool and University of Salford said the device can currently harvest around two milliwatts of power but could exceed 30 milliwatts with a few realistic improvements.
This could enable a new generation of GPS tracking, more advanced signal processing and more frequent and longer wireless transmission, the researchers said. The device could be particularly useful for soldiers who currently have to carry up to 10kg of power equipment when on foot patrol, or to power body-monitoring devices such as heart rate monitors, pedometers and accelerometers.
The knee is thought to be a suitable mechanism for energy generation, as it has a large change in angle during walking and does so at significant speeds. A device attached to the joint could therefore generate large amounts of power, the researchers claim.
“There is an on-going project looking at manufacturing a more compact and truly wearable harvester,” said Dr Michele Pozzi, lead author of the study.
“At the moment we are using precise but cost-effective manufacturing techniques for the plectra and casing and anticipate that remaining parts will be moulded industrially, slashing the cost. I’d put a cost tag of less than £10 for each harvester on a large scale production.”
This week’s bizarre inventions also include a solar-powered, phone-charging “Booster Brolly”, developed by mobile operator Vodafone. The new gadget is capable of charging a handset in three hours through its flexible solar panels, placed in the umbrella’s canopy.
Designed in partnership with the University College London, the wind and waterproof contraption will be trialled at the upcoming Isle of Wight music festival.
Many of the LinkedIn e-mails alerts instructing users on how to reset passwords accessed by hackers were dumped into spam boxes, according to e-mail security vendor Cloudmark.
In a blog post last week, Andrew Conway, a Cloudmark researcher, said a substantial increase in spam reports last weekend were traced to LinkedIn password reset e-mail alerts
In many cases, the e-mail messages that users’ marked as spam were legitimate alerts from LinkedIn, Conway said.
“Over 4 percent of the people receiving this e-mail thought it was spam and sent it straight to the bit bucket,” Conway said. “If Linkedin sends out 6.5 million e-mails, then a quarter of a million people are congratulating themselves on avoiding spam — and still have a compromised Linkedin password.” (See also “Another Breach Reveals Weak Passwords; Will We Ever Learn?”).
Conway said that LinkedIn did all the right things to ensure that users would not treat its e-mails with suspicion. All were addressed to the recipient by name, did not contain any links and were DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) signed to validate their authenticity.
“Even so, it was taken for spam,” Conway said. “Part of the problem is that people are used to getting e-mail that they don’t want from LinkedIn, and rather than unsubscribe, some of them just mark it as spam and hope that it will go away.”
Estimating the Overlooked Alerts
In an e-mail to Computerworld, Conway said that Cloudmark, a provider of messaging security services to Internet Service Providers, monitors messages for clients by assigning a number of digital signatures based on the content of the messages. Thus it can determine which signatures are present on e-mails that are manually flagged as spam by users.
“The Linkedin compromised e-mail message[s] generated several unique signatures, so we are able to measure the rate at which these are marked [by users] as spam,” he said.
Cloudmark was able to confirm that LinkedIn, and not spammers, had sent the alerts because the e-mails were DKIM signed by Linkedin.com, he said.
The alerts were sent after hackers last week accessed about 6.5 million hashed passwords from a LinkedIn database and posted the stolen data on Russian hacker site.
By last weekend, most of the passwords were believed to have been decrypted by hackers and made available in plain text on many sites.
How LinkedIn Handled the Hack
LinkedIn has confirmed the password compromise but released few details about the incident.
In three separate LinkedIn communications about the incident, the company didn’t say how the passwords were accessed or whether other data, such as e-mail IDs, were also compromised. LinkedIn said only that no e-mail IDs have yet been publicly posted.
The latest LinkedIn update, posted Tuesday, repeats much of the information that was included in previous notes.
The latest post did say that all passwords posted by the hackers, and that “we believed created risk for our members, based on our investigation,” have been disabled.
Since the attack, LinkedIn has come in for some criticism for not better protecting passwords.
The company has said that it has completed a “long-planned transition” from merely hashing passwords to a system that both hashes and salts passwords. Salting is a process in which a random string of characters is appended to a password before it is hashed.
Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld. Follow Jaikumar on Twitter at @jaivijayan, or subscribe to Jaikumar’s RSS feed . His e-mail address is jvijayan@computerworld.com.
Our world is becoming increasingly unstable, and millions of Americans are feverishly preparing for what they consider to be “the end of the world as we know it”. In fact, it is estimated that there are now approximately 3 million “preppers” in the United States. But for people that have never done much prepping before, getting started can be both confusing and intimidating. In fact, I get more questions about prepping than anything else. People are constantly asking me how they can prepare for the difficult times that are coming. Well, in this article I have compiled 120 powerful pieces of advice for preppers. No two situations are exactly the same, and almost every prepper approaches preparation differently, but there are some basic principles that apply to almost everyone. And without a doubt, a lot of people that are not preparing now are going to regret it in the years ahead. The global financial system is falling apart, the United States and Europe are absolutely drowning in debt, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are becoming more frequent, signs of social decay are everywhere and war could erupt in the Middle East at any time. Actually, it is absolutely amazing that there are so many people out there that still believe that “prepping” is not necessary.
When people ask me what they can do to prepare, there is usually one tip that I give above everything else. It is not very “sexy”, but it is absolutely foundational.
During the last recession, millions of people lost their jobs, and because a lot of them had no financial cushion, many of them also lost their homes.
For the next couple of years, my number one tip is to build up an emergency fund. If you are a prepper and you are living month to month, then you are in a very vulnerable position.
What is going to happen to all of your preparations if something goes wrong and you suddenly lose your home to foreclosure?
I recommend that everyone have an emergency fund that will be able to cover all bills and expenses for at least six months.
Yes, cash is continually losing value. But during any economic downturn it is absolutely essential that you be able to continue to pay your bills. Having a cash reserve is the smart thing to do.
So what else can people do to start prepping for the tough times that are on the horizon?
In a previous article, I explained that a good place to start is by focusing on the five basics….
1) Food
2) Water
3) Shelter
4) Energy
5) Self-Defense
If you have those five areas totally covered you will be in pretty good shape.
The following are some more things to consider as you are prepping….
*Do not post pictures of money or gold or your preps on Facebook. If you do, you might get some unwelcome visitors to your home.
*Make sure that your preparations are not against the law. If you have any doubt about this, make sure that you do not go on national television and tell all of America what you are doing.
*In the event of a major disaster, there will likely be hordes of “non-preppers” running around looking to take away the things that all of the preppers have been storing up. This is something that you will need to be prepared for.
*The following are 6 excellent privacy tips for preppers that come from an article by an anonymous author that was recently posted on theintelhub.com….
1. Trust no one that you do not personally know. Even the little old lady down the road will rat on you if she is hungry when the SHTF.
2. Keep your prepping to yourself. Again, do not tell anyone you are prepping. If they know you have stores of food, where do you think they will think of first when the SHTF? Oh and don’t forget, the Department of Homeland Security thinks people with stockpiles of food and weapons as potential domestic terrorist.
3. Don’t share any prepping articles on Facebook or other social media. Don’t draw attention to yourself by posting prepping articles or discussing the topic on the website. You may think you are educating your friends, but in reality you are just letting them know of your actions and plans.
4. Make sure boxes are not labeled with the company name if your order emergency supplies. Most companies will publish this in their ordering information. You don’t want to tip off the UPS driver that you just received a year’s worth of freeze dried food.
5. Do not tell anyone what you are up to. You don’t know how hard it is for me not to tell people I meet that I was almost on the National Geographic TV show. That would be a disaster.
6. Be alert to what others are saying. I was sitting in my dental hygienist chair a week ago and she told me about another customer that was storing food. She thought he might be prepping and she said if it ever got bad, she knew where to find some food. I just acknowledged the statement and let it rest.
*In one article that I did about preparation, I listed 10 things that you can start doing right now to get yourself into a better position for the chaos that is coming….
You can have a year’s supply of beans and rice; enough ammo and weapons to fight off the Golden Horde, a gaggle of zombies and a few renegade cannibals; acres of seeds and enough bandages to turn the entire NFL into mummies, but if you don’t have the prepared mindset, you will still struggle to survive.
What is a prepared mind?
It’s a way of thinking. It’s a different philosophy of life than that of most of the population of North America. Someone who is mentally prepared processes everything differently: threats, challenges, and windfalls.
There are many common factors to this philosophical viewpoint but here are the ones that are the most important.
1. A prepared mind reacts to a threat by taking action.
In my self defense class, I learned that there are two types of people: victims and victors. A victim will curl up in a defensive position, perhaps sob, or even freeze in terror. A victor, however, will react to the threat, even if she knows that she is outweighed, outgunned or outnumbered. A victor does not give up. A victor may choose not to fight at a particular moment because it is not the best opportunity, but she will watch for an opening and she will recognize it and be ready when it comes. A victor knows when to stand and fight and when to run to fight another day. Even a victor can be afraid, but fear does not rule her – she rules her fear.
2. A prepared mind is situationally aware.
A preparedness mindset makes one ever aware of what is going on around him. If an unusual vehicle is present, he takes note of it. He knows what is normal in his surroundings and is quick to notice when something is different. When he is in an unfamiliar place, he is actively observing, looking for potential threats and taking mental photographs which can be retrieved if he needs to elude danger or defend himself.
3.A prepared mind considers privacy a way of life.
Privacy is more than just OPSEC; it’s a way of life. A prepared individual carefully guards her internet privacy, by controlling settings on social media, taking care to avoid posting information that could aid a criminal in locating her, keeping a low profile by not posting attention-getting pictures, and using non-identifying usernames in forums. She doesn’t share stories about prepping with friends, family and neighbours, unless they have been carefully vetted and are included in plans for the future, should the need arise. Even with those she shares information with, there are things that remain secret, such has hiding places, survival caches, and the amount of supplies that she possesses. She teaches her children to be likewise circumspect regarding family supplies and preparations.
4. A prepared mind has a back-up plan to the back-up plan.
There is never JUST Plan A. There is also Plan B and Plan C, at the very least. A prepared person has multiple evacuation routes and methods. He has a bug out bag in more than one location. He doesn’t have all of his supplies in one place, but in two or three, or even more, locations. Every member of his family knows what to do in the event of an emergency, even if they are geographically apart from the other family members. He attempts to think of things that could foil his plans and then figures out how to deal with the issues before they arise.
When an impending disaster threatens our area, the first instinct is to run to the store and stock up on emergency food and supplies. However, everyone else has the same brilliant idea, which means emergency food and supplies will be in high demand and depleted if you didn’t time your trip to the store well. There is nothing worse than leaving a crowded store with no storm supplies and a disaster bearing down upon you.
Storing food for storms is not the only reason you should have an emergency food supply. In fact, due to current state of the economy, you are more likely to run into an emergency with a disappearing budget. Food prices have been soaring during the past few years, and there doesn’t seem to be any relief in sight. Have you considered looking at your emergency supply as an investment? Many of the food items you will be purchasing over the next year are considered commodities (e.g., sugar, wheat, corn, rice, etc). Why not make the investment and purchase food at today’s prices and consume at tomorrow’s higher prices?
Those of you who have water stored know that it takes up a lot of space. When storing a short term water supply, purchase the 5- or 10-gallon water containers. Note: The 5-gallon water containers are easier to organize if you place them on their sides and stack them.
Another suggestion is to reuse your juice and soda bottles. As long as the container is comprised of food grade plastic, it is safe to reuse; however, make sure that the plastic container is washed well before reusing. I recommend investing in a water filtration system. While water filters, such as Katadyn or even Berkey, are a little pricey, they can be used multiple times and would be a good preparedness item to have on hand in case of a longer-term emergency.
The following items will create a broad selection of foods that can be consumed in an emergency situation. You can create foods like biscuits and jelly, cereal and milk, oatmeal, sandwiches, soups, pastas, casseroles, etc. Constructing an emergency menu now before a disaster happens will enable you to see what foods you have and what foods you may need.
Afraid of whistleblowers, TSA acquiring technology to spy on its own employees
by: J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) What does it say when an agency is so afraid of what its own employees might say, that it is willing to invest in technology to spy on them to prevent (or, at a minimum, identify) whistleblowers? In this day and age, the Leviathan seems unwilling to stop at anything to protect its growing police state.
According to NextGov, the Transportation Security Administration - that bastion of civil rights and professionalism – top agency officials, stung by recent revelations that the TSA’s billion-dollar scanners aren’t able to detect small metal objects and other reputation-damaging incidents – are shopping around for a computer program capable of snooping on employees’ online activities.
Procurement documents posted online at FedBizOpps.gov, the federal Web site where agencies solicit bids from private firms on a range of items, software and services, say the TSA is concerned about an “insider threat,” and as such is “in need of a tool” to “monitor and detect insider threats…at the user host level.”
When all else fails, trample the rights of your own employees too
“The scope of this procurement is an enterprise insider threat software package. In order to detect an insider threat, technology is required to monitor and obtain visibility into users’ actions. TSA Focused Operations requires a tool that can monitor user activities at the user host level,” says the solicitation.
Specifically, the TSA software must be capable of monitoring activities through, among other capabilities:
“All activities that are being monitored/logged must call back to a central enterprise command infrastructure and transfer its collected data,” the solicitation says.
Nice, huh? Now the agency doesn’t even trust its own employees – so little that, according to the solicitation, the program the agency eventually adopts must be secret to the employee. “The end user must not have the ability to detect this technology,” it says.
Naturally, and right on cue, the TSA defended its action.
Three civilian whistleblowers who reported missing body parts and other failures at the mortuary that handles the remains of America’s dead soldiers will be honored as public servants of the year at a ceremony next week.
James G. Parsons Sr., Mary Ellen Spera and William Zwicharowski will be recognized June 28 by the Office of Special Counsel, the independent federal agency that investigates complaints of wrongdoing brought by whistleblowers.
As with many whistleblowers, these employees, based at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, suffered retaliation after speaking up about serious missteps at the mortuary. Their revelations prompted an 18-month investigation by the special counsel’s office that concluded that supervisors at the mortuary had wrongfully tried to fire two of the employees and take other disciplinary action against the others after they reported missing body parts, lax management and other problems at the base.
At the time, senior Air Force officials said there was no evidence that the whistleblowers had suffered reprisals or that the supervisors had broken any specific rules. When the special counsel’s report was released in January, the Air Force was criticized for not taking enough action against the officials who who retaliated against the whistleblowers. Top mortuary officials eventually were punished for their actions.
Parsons, an autopsy embalming technician, was fired last year but reinstated after the special counsel’s office intervened. Zwicharowski and Spera said they were suspended or placed on leave after they disclosed the problems at Dover.
The ceremony will be held at 2 p.m. at the Reserve Officers Association at 1 Constitution Ave. in Northeast Washington.
Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, has unsuccessfully sought to curb the UN’s dispute tribunal’s jurisdiction. Photograph: Sandro Campardos/Keystone
A landmark case brought by a former United Nations employee against the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has cast light on what activists describe as a pervasive culture of impunity in an organisation where whistleblowers are given minimal protection from reprisals.
James Wasserstrom, a veteran American diplomat, was sacked and then detained by UN police, who ransacked his flat, searched his car and put his picture on a wanted poster after he raised suspicions in 2007 about corruption in the senior ranks of the UN mission in Kosovo (Unmik).
The UN’s dispute tribunal has ruled that the organisation’s ethics office failed to protect Wasserstrom against such reprisals from his bosses, and that the UN’s mechanisms for dealing with whistleblowers were “fundamentally flawed”, to the extent the organisation had failed to protect the basic rights of its own employees.
The case was directed against Ban as being directly responsible for the actions of the ethics office.
Of the 297 cases where whistleblowers complained of retaliation for trying to expose wrongdoing inside the UN, the ethics office fully sided with the complainant just once in six years, according to the Government Accountability Project (GAP), a watchdog organisation in Washington.
“Like any internal office in an institution, it is always subjected to huge pressures from above,” said Bea Edwards, GAP’s executive director. “It is very difficult for an official employed by the institution to be impartial.”
The dispute tribunal, which was created in 2009 in an effort to improve the UN’s system of internal justice, has challenged the power of the secretariat on several occasions, forcing it to hand over evidence in Wasserstrom’s case, and a higher court has rejected the UN’s attempt to appeal.
Ban has sought to curb the tribunal’s jurisdiction but has so far been unsuccessful.
The tribunal wants another hearing on the Wasserstrom case in October to decide how the UN should compensate him for his treatment. The American diplomat, now an anti-corruption official in the US embassy in Kabul, said he would also be asking for the UN to pay his legal costs, because its reluctance to co-operate with its own ethics office by handing over evidence had stretched the case out over several years.
“In an ideal world this would force the UN to revisit its ethics office and investigate how it interprets its own rules on whistleblowing, but the UN is far from an ideal world. Pressure has to be put on it for it to change,” he said.
“I was told at some point in the whole process that the UN didn’t want a ‘culture of snitches’. What has grown up instead is a culture completely insulated from reality. It’s a culture of impunity.”
In response to the judgment, Ban’s spokesman, Martin Nesirky, commented by email yesterday: “The UN Dispute Tribunal issued a judgment on liability in the case of Mr Wasserstrom, but has not yet ruled on compensation and remedies. In that sense, the matter is still open. The United Nations Secretariat is studying the judgment and, in keeping with its policy on ongoing cases, is not in a position to provide any comment now.”
In 2006, Wasserstrom was working for Unmik, advising on the management of its public utilities, when he raised objections to the energy minister’s takeover of the electricity corporation in contravention of international community guidelines. His concerns were shrugged off by his superiors. Months later, Wasserstrom came across evidence that two senior officials might have received bribes for awarding a contract to build a coal-fired power plant and mine.
He passed on his suspicions to the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), the anti-corruption watchdog in New York, which began what was supposed to be a confidential inquiry. However, Wasserstrom believes his participation in the inquiry was leaked to his superiors in Unmik. As a consequence he was sacked and his office, the public utilities watchdog, was abolished.
Wasserstrom was quickly hired as a consultant by the Kosovo government to advise on running the telecommunications ministry and Pristina airport, but says that infuriated the Unmik bosses who had fired him.
On the grounds that the new job represented a conflict of interest, Wasserstrom was detained by UN police on the Kosovo border on his way to his house in Greece in May 2007, driven in custody to the capital, where UN policemen searched his apartment and car without a warrant.
The UN police put up a poster depicting Wasserstrom at the gates of Unmik headquarters and even encircled his office with crime tape, which stayed in place for several months. The conflict of interest case was eventually dropped. “It was a gigantic witch-hunt that went on several months,” Wasserstrom said. “I knew there was nothing wrong with anything I had done. But they didn’t even do the most basic fact-finding in their rush to find me guilty.”
The OIOS investigation of Wassserstrom’s suspicions about kickbacks was never published.
The UN has made several attempts at self-policing over the years, none of which proved very effective. In January 2006, after the Iraq oil-for-food scandal, the then secretary general, Kofi Annan, brought in a whistleblower protection policy, giving the ethics office the job of ensuring employees were not victimised for reporting wrongdoing.
However, its jurisdiction was undermined dramatically after Ban became secretary general in 2007. He allowed the management at the various funds and agencies under the UN umbrella to opt out of the ethics office after being subject to challenges by whistleblowers, and several of these bodies formed their own ethics offices under their own control.
The main ethics office in New York, meanwhile, found itself overwhelmed by a mass of petty issues, such as non-reimbursement of travel expenses, and a shortage of personnel, who were thinly dispersed around the world. The shortages dissuaded “walk-in service seekers”, the office said in its 2010 report.
The report also pointed out that the internal justice procedures allowed the OIOS to stonewall investigations.
“The lacuna in the policy on protection against retaliation allows the investigation division of OIOS to decline to investigate a prima facie case of retaliation referred to it by the ethics office. As a result, staff may be sceptical about the ability of the ethics office to provide meaningful protection,” the report noted drily.
The ethics office found there was a prima facie case of retaliation against Wasserstrom and handed the issue to the OIOS. In a report in July 2008, the investigators said Wasserstrom’s treatment “appeared to be excessive” but found no evidence it was deliberately retaliatory. As a result, the ethics office dropped the case.
In its ruling last week, the UN dispute tribunal was scathing about the OIOS and the ethics office’s performance. In particular, the judge Goolam Meeran upbraided the UN, “the principal agency promoting the observance of human rights norms and practices and respect for the rule of law”, for having “condoned such humiliating and degrading treatment of a member of its own staff”.
“I think this ruling could lead to the reopening of the claims of the other more than 200 whistleblowers who had their retaliation cases rejected, because there is a very good chance that these were turned down on the same specious grounds,” Wasserstrom said. “They could be swamped by people coming forward.”
The UN dispute tribunal has rejected an attempt by Ban last year to limit its jurisdiction, but Edwards predicted the secretary general could well try again.
“There are all sorts of ways the secretary general can cripple the dispute tribunal. It can be starved of budget and staff or overwhelmed with cases,” she said. Meanwhile, she said the more than five years it has taken to resolve Wasserstrom’s complaint could act as its own deterrent against whistleblowing within the UN.
She said: “In that time people have lost jobs, their reputations. Many lose their families. They have been destroyed.”
Speaking up: other UN whistleblowers
Artjon Shkurtaj
An Albanian employee of the UN Development Programme in North Korea who found counterfeit US dollars in the office safe in Pyongyang in 2004, and was fired in 2007, a few months after reporting the find to the US mission at UN headquarters. The UN dispute tribunal ruled that his rights had been violated in 2010.
Cynthia Brzak
An American employee of the UN High Commission for Refugees who accused the high commissioner at the time, the former Dutch minister Ruud Lubbers, of sexual harassment in May 2004. Lubbers denied the charge. UN internal investigators delivered a report to the then secretary general, Kofi Annan, but it was not published. Lubbers resigned in 2005 after the report was leaked, showing the investigation upheld Brzak’s complaint. The UN continued to insist the case had not been proven, and Brzak has attempted, so far without success, to seek redress in US courts.
Kathryn Bolkovac
An American working on contract in the UN police in Bosnia who was fired by her contractor, DynCorp, after reporting the involvement of other UN police in sex trafficking. DynCorp claimed Bolkovac had been dismissed for falsifying timesheets. Her case was upheld in a British court in 2002, starring Rachel Weisz.
The ArcelorMittal Orbit tower in the Olympic Park, designed by Anish Kapoor. Photograph: Ian Nicholson/PA
In the first of what could be a summer of protest linked to the Olympics, a group connected to the Occupy movement has taken over an empty Georgian house owned by the Olympic park sculptor Anish Kapoor for a one-day arts event.
The group, calling itself Bread and Circuses, a reference to its argument that the Olympics are a means of distracting people from pressing economic and social issues, said it had “liberated” the part-derelict five-storey house on Lincoln’s Inn Fields, one of central London‘s most picturesque and expensive garden squares and the scene of a rough sleepers’ “tent city” in the 1980s.
The group says the house has been left empty since the artist – whose ArcelorMittal Orbit tower, a 115-metre tall sculpture and observation platform, dominates the skyline of the Olympic Park in east London – bought it in 2009. Kapoor is listed as director of a company called 1-2 Lincoln’s Inn Fields Ltd, the address of the property, which was formed in 2009. The bulk of the £22.7m cost of the steel sculpture was met by the steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal.
The building is five stories high with an enormous iron door and covered windows. Inside, there are several enormous rooms on the ground floor with a staircase climbing through the centre. The wallpaper is peeling and wires hang threateningly from the ceiling. It contains no furniture except for a pair of supermarket trolleys.
“This is not about being against the Olympics,” said one protester. “This is about what the government is using the Olympics for.”
The small group of protesters say they have been in the property for a week.
One said they wanted to find a creative use for what they regard as wasted space. “Just look at it,” he said. “We want to use all this empty space.”
A homeless man who has joined the group in the property said: “How can someone do this? How can you own a place like this and not even use it when there are people sleeping in the streets?”
From 4pm on Friday the house will host art exhibits, talks and film screenings, with live music after 9pm, the group said. Among those billed to appear are John Hilary, director of the charity War on Want, one of the organisers of the Counter Olympics Network, which seeks to challenge the corporate nature of the event, and Trenton Oldfield, who swam into the path of April’s university boat race in a protest against “elitism”.
The group sent a statement from a member, Jeniffer Taylor, who described the Olympics as “a smokescreen to take our minds off austerity measures, the global economic crisis and the commodification and privatisation of everything, even art”.
In keeping with the media-savvy nature of events connected to the Occupy movement, the one-day protest already has its own Facebook page and Twitter feed. The group sent a message to supporters that read: “New Holborn squatt will b [sic] evicted in saturday. Big event this friday against london politics! BREAD AND CIRCUSES: speaches, music, art, performance, rave and more surprises!”
The wider Occupy movement has not announced plans to disrupt the Olympics with protests, but it seems inevitable that it or other similar groups will use the global attention on London during the event to publicise their causes. This is particularly the case as, given the loosely collective nature of Occupy, more or less anyone can begin a protest under their banner.
Mark Kennedy is working for a US security firm, but there are unanswered questions over his past commercial work and his FBI links – can you help?
Mark Kennedy has resurfaced in the news – he is now working for a US private security firm advising corporations on how to deal with the “threat” of political activists. He says he is providing “investigative services, risk and threat assessments” to the Densus Group.
We wrote this on it (hat tip to Indymedia which reported it first here).
To many, this move will be further confirmation of Kennedy’s true loyalties and will silence his claims that he developed sympathies for the activists. He has clearly chosen his future, and it is not to help activists. It is plain that, for all his claims, he has not done anything to help the campaigners since he was unmasked by activists in 2010. For instance, he was at the heart of the police operation to spy on activists for many years and therefore knows a lot. But he has done little to explain how and why the campaigners were infiltrated.
He may have fallen out with the police, but this was mainly because he felt that he was treated badly by his bosses, not out of a desire to blow the whistle on a domestic surveillance programme.
Throughout the interviews he gave to the media, he rarely deviated from a set script in which he sought to justify what he did, but rarely disclosed much of what he and his spymasters were doing.
So now he is following the well-trodden path of many ex-coppers – into the private security industry where he can exploit the skills and knowledge he gained while in the police.
(Incidentally it is staggering how many private investigators in the UK are ex-police – even industry representatives estimate that between 50% and 65% of private eyes are former police officers.)
The news about Kennedy’s new job did not come from a leak – it was put in the public domain by Kennedy who announced it on his LinkedIn profile (doubtedlessly because he is touting for more business). He may of course be working for other firms.
His own description of his covert work raises two interesting questions.
Firstly he says that he was deployed in animal rights groups. It seems that the only time that Kennedy had any involvement in animal rights campaigns was after he left the police. As this chronology shows, he appeared at animal rights gatherings in 2010. This was the period when he was apparently working for a private security firm, Global Open, whose clients include firms which have been the target of animal rights activists. If this is true, he would probably have continued doing that for some time unless activists had exposed him.
Kennedy has denied that he worked for the private security industry at this time, although the value of that denial is now surely questionable.
We have blogged before (here) about his connection to Global Open – as ever, any information on this would be appreciated.
Secondly, he says he was deployed in the US. This implies that he was working for the FBI spying on activists. We are pursuing various leads on this and have also blogged on this (here) before, so please do get in touch if you can help.
The parties started out as an experimental matchmaking fest by a woman weary of online dating, but it turns out they also have a root in science. Researchers have shown that humans can use scent to sort out genetic combinations that could lead to weaker offspring.
Several dozen people attended a recent party in Los Angeles, though many chuckled at the idea of finding a match in a smelly T-shirt.
Groundwater age indicates the length of time that a sample of water has been in the ground since infiltrating from the land surface. This study reveals that modern pumping in southern Maryland west of the Chesapeake Bay and on the Eastern Shore is tapping groundwater resources that have accumulated in the aquifer over multiple cycles of climate change and are not quickly recharging.
A portion of the groundwater in the upper Patapsco aquifer underlying Maryland is over a million years old. A new study suggests that this ancient groundwater, a vital source of freshwater supplies for the region east of Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, was recharged over periods of time much greater than human timescales.
“Understanding the average age of groundwater allows scientists to estimate at what rate water is re-entering the aquifer to replace the water we are currently extracting for human use,” explained USGS Director Marcia McNutt.
“This is the first step in designing sustainable practices of aquifer management that take into account the added challenges of sea level rise and increased human demand for quality water supplies.”
This new study from the USGS, the Maryland Geological Survey (MGS) and the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) documents for the first time the occurrence of groundwater that is more than one million years old in a major water-supply aquifer along the Atlantic Coast.
The oldest groundwater was found in the deepest parts of the aquifer, but groundwater even in shallower parts of the aquifer is tens to hundreds of thousands years old.
Groundwater age indicates the length of time that a sample of water has been in the ground since infiltrating from the land surface. This study reveals that modern pumping in southern Maryland west of the Chesapeake Bay and on the Eastern Shore is tapping groundwater resources that have accumulated in the aquifer over multiple cycles of climate change and are not quickly recharging.
The analysis shows that water flowed from the land surface into the deep aquifer during cooler periods in earth’s history, when glaciers covered much of the northeastern U.S. and sea level was about 125 meters lower than it is today. During warmer periods in earth’s history, such as in modern times, higher sea levels slow recharge of fresh water to the aquifer, due to a lower gradient between the recharge and discharge areas.
Modern-day pumping rates have lowered water pressures and changed water chemistry, affecting the aquifer’s ability to provide freshwater for drinking and other uses. Concerns over saltwater intrusion in some areas have led water managers to increasingly move groundwater production from shallower aquifers to the deeper upper Patapsco aquifer, which has caused groundwater levels to decline.
The findings are being used to help understand the patterns and rates of groundwater movement in the aquifers of the Coastal Plain. Such information will be used by the Maryland Department of the Environment to ensure that the management and use of the State’s groundwater resources are being carried out to protect its long-term sustainability.
The findings bring into focus that current users are withdrawing groundwater that was recharged eons ago and accentuate the need to review current water-supply management strategies and develop new tools and models to protect this valuable resource for the future.
There are relatively few aquifers in the world in which million-year-old groundwater has been documented, including the Nubian aquifer in the Sahara Desert, Canada’s Alberta Basin, and the Great Artesian Basin in Australia
More information about the study is available online and in Hydrogeology Journal in an article titled, “Old groundwater in parts of the upper Patapsco aquifer, Atlantic Coastal Plain, Maryland, USA: evidence from radiocarbon, chlorine-36 and helium-4,” by L. N. Plummer, J. R. Eggleston, D. C. Andreasen, J. P. Raffensperger, A. G. Hunt, and G. C. Casile.
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Caterpillars of the cotton bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera, feed on many different plants and pose a serious threat to cotton farming. Credit: Gyorgy Csoka.
Resistance of cotton bollworm to insect-killing cotton plants involves more diverse genetic changes than expected, an international research team reports in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. To decrease sprays of broad-spectrum insecticides, which can harm animals other than the target pests, cotton and corn have been genetically engineered to produce toxins derived from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt.
Bt toxins kill certain insect pests but are harmless to most other creatures including people. These environmentally friendly toxins have been used for decades in sprays by organic growers and since 1996 in engineered Bt crops by mainstream farmers.
Over time, scientists have learned, initially rare genetic mutations that confer resistance to Bt toxins are becoming more common as a growing number of pest populations adapt to Bt crops.
In the first study to compare how pests evolve resistance to Bt crops in the laboratory vs. the field, researchers discovered that while some the of the lab-selected mutations do occur in the wild populations, some mutations that differ markedly from those seen in the lab are important in the field.
Caterpillars of the cotton bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera, can munch on a wide array of plants before emerging as moths. This species is the major cotton pest in China, where the study was carried out.
Bruce Tabashnik, head of the department of entomology at the University of Arizona College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, who co-authored the study, considers the findings an early warning to farmers, regulatory agencies and the biotech industry.
“Scientists expected the insects to adapt, but we’re just finding out now how they’re becoming resistant in the field,” Tabashnik said.
To avoid surprises, researchers have exposed cotton bollworm populations to Bt toxins in controlled lab experiments and studied the genetic mechanisms by which the insects adapt.
“We try to stay ahead of the game,” he said. “We want to anticipate what genes are involved, so we can proactively develop strategies to sustain the efficacy of Bt crops and reduce reliance on insecticide sprays. The implicit assumption is what we learn from lab-selected resistance will apply in the field.”
That assumption, according to Tabashnik, had never been tested before for resistance to Bt crops.
Now for the first time, the international team gathered genetic evidence from pests in the field, enabling them to directly compare the genes involved in the resistance of wild and lab-reared populations.
They found some resistance-conferring mutations in the field were the same as in lab-reared pests, but some others were strikingly different.
“We found exactly the same mutation in the field that was detected in the lab,” Tabashnik said. “But we also found lots of other mutations, most of them in the same gene and one in a completely different gene.”
A major surprise came when the team identified two unrelated, dominant mutations in the field populations. “Dominant” means that one copy of the genetic variant is enough to confer resistance to Bt toxin.
In contrast, resistance mutations characterized before from lab selection are recessive – meaning it takes two copies of the mutation, one provided by each parent, to make an insect resistant to Bt toxin.
“Dominant resistance is more difficult to manage and cannot be readily slowed with refuges, which are especially useful when resistance is recessive,” Tabashnik said.
Refuges consist of plants that do not have a Bt toxin gene and thus allow survival of insects that are susceptible to the toxin. Refuges are planted near Bt crops with the goal of producing enough susceptible insects to dilute the population of resistant insects, by making it unlikely two resistant insects will mate and produce resistant offspring.
According to Tabashnik, the refuge strategy worked brilliantly against the pink bollworm in Arizona, where this pest had plagued cotton farmers for a century, but is now scarce.
The dominant mutations discovered in China throw a wrench in the refuge strategy because resistant offspring arise from matings between susceptible and resistant insects.
He added that the study will enable regulators and growers to better manage emerging resistance to Bt crops.
“We have been speculating and using indirect methods to try and predict what would happen in the field. Only now that resistance is starting to pop up in many places is it possible to actually examine resistance in the field.
I think the techniques from this study will be applied to many other situations around the world, and we’ll begin to develop a general understanding of the genetic basis of resistance in the field.”
The current study is part of a collaboration funded by the Chinese government, involving a dozen scientists at four institutions in China and the U.S. Yidong Wu at Nanjing Agricultural University designed the study and led the Chinese effort.
He emphasized the importance of the ongoing collaboration for addressing resistance to Bt crops, which is a major issue in China. He also pointed out that the discovery of dominant resistance will encourage the scientific community to rethink the refuge strategy.
Tabashnik said China is the world’s top cotton producer, with about 16 billion pounds of cotton per year. India is number two, followed by the U.S., which produces about half as much cotton as China.
In 2011, farmers worldwide planted 160 million acres of Bt cotton and Bt corn. The percentage of cotton planted with Bt cotton reached 75 per cent in the U.S. in 2011, but has exceeded 90 per cent since 2004 in northern China, where most of China’s cotton is grown.
The researchers report that resistance-conferring mutations in cotton bollworm were three times more common in northern China than in areas of northwestern China where less Bt cotton has been grown.
Even in northern China, however, growers haven’t noticed the emerging resistance yet, Tabashnik said, because only about 2 percent of the cotton bollworms there are resistant.
“As a grower, if you’re killing 98 percent of pests with Bt cotton, you wouldn’t notice anything. But this study tells us there is trouble on the horizon.”
Nano-pesticides encompass a great variety of products, some of which are already on the market. The application of nano-pesticides would be the only intentional diffuse input of large quantities of engineered nano-particles into the environment.
Nanotechnology has developed tremendously in the past decade and was able to create many new materials with a vast range of potential applications. Some of those innovative materials are promising to reduce environmental pollution. For instance, carbon nanotubes and metal nano-particles are great candidate materials for cleaning polluted water and soils.
However, the risk that nano-particles may pose to human and environment health is not yet fully understood. The precautionary principle therefore suggests keeping environmental release of nano-particles minimal until their fate and toxicity is better understood.
“A good understanding of nano-materials is essential to evaluate whether the benefits overcome potential new risks”, explains Thilo Hofmann, dean elected at the Faculty of Geosciences, Geography and Astronomy of the University of Vienna.
Among numerous proposed applications, nanotechnology has the potential to revolutionize agricultural practices and food systems. Research has been extremely active over the past few years to develop new pesticides products based on nanotechnology.
“Nano-pesticide research is emerging at high speed at the agrochemical labs, however, this topic has not reached public awareness or state authorities so far, nor are any products available at the marked.
“Since those nano-pesticides have new or enhanced properties, this will change in near future and will inevitably result in both new risks and new benefits to human and environmental health”, states Thilo Hofmann.
Nano-pesticides encompass a great variety of products, some of which are already on the market. The application of nano-pesticides would be the only intentional diffuse input of large quantities of engineered nano-particles into the environment.
Innovation always results in both drawbacks and benefits for human and environmental health. Nano-pesticides may reduce environmental contamination through the reduction in pesticide application rates and reduced losses.
However, nano-pesticides may also create new kinds of contamination of soils and waterways due to enhanced transport, longer persistence and higher toxicity.
The current level of knowledge does not allow a fair assessment of the advantages and disadvantages that will result from the use of nano-pesticides. As a prerequisite for such assessment, a better understanding of the fate and effect of nano-pesticides after their application is required.
The suitability of current regulations should also be analyzed so that refinements can be implemented if needed. Research on nano-pesticides is therefore a priority for preserving the quality of both the food chain and the environment.
Terra Daily
by Staff Writers
Southampton UK (SPX) Jun 25, 2012
File image.
University of Southampton researchers are pioneering a new way of measuring and monitoring the impact of industrial and agricultural development on the environment. Working in collaboration with East China Normal University, the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology and the University of Dundee, the team has created the world’s first long-term record of ecosystem health, which examines the past condition of environmental resources in China’s Yangtze basin region, and helps develop forecasts for the future.
“We have examined what effect modern intensive farming techniques have had on ‘ecosystem services’ – things like food, fuel, soil and clean water – in the Yangtze basin area. From this we get an overview of the condition of these resources, which are essential for the survival of local communities,” says lead researcher Professor John Dearing from the University of Southampton.
The team drilled core samples at two lakes in the region, west of Shanghai, and have made detailed studies of the sediment they retrieved.
Professor Dearing explains, “The data we have compiled came from the analysis of microfossils, geo-chemistry, mineral magnetism, and sediment accumulation rates.
These different analyses give us clues about the past health of the environment – for example, pollen samples tell us about the diversity of plant species at a given time, while metal content can be used to measure air quality. By bringing all the information together, we have been able to track the condition of environmental resources over a 200 year period.”
In addition, researchers have examined official statistical records and climate models to give trends on land use, population, gross domestic product (GDP), temperature and precipitation. By comparing these statistics with the core sample data they have seen that as GDP in the Yangtze region increased sharply in the 1970s, the quality of ecosystem services suffered a downward trend.
Improved environmental regulation and policies encouraged a partial stabilisation in the 1980s, but the downward trend continued sharply in the 1990s and beyond. The study findings have been published in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1.
Professor Dearing comments, “Intensive agriculture has lifted many Chinese rural communities out of poverty in the last 30 years, but irrigation, mechanisation and fertilisers that came with it have degraded soils badly and there is already evidence of declining water quality.
“Economic development and an increase in regional wealth are clear trade-offs for the decline in ecosystem services. However, in the long-term, this decline will be a threat to local livelihoods and could reach a ‘tipping point’, becoming irreversible.
“Financial indexes, like the FTSE 100 or Dow Jones, are used to monitor the health of an economy, and this project has led us to consider that palaeoecological records could provide the basis for a regional ‘ecosystem service index’, monitoring the health of a region’s environment.”
Where suitable, researchers hope to use the technique they have developed in China for other areas of the world, with the aim of helping policymakers to prioritise the most urgent environmental problems and identify which strategies work best to tackle them.
Terra Daily
by Staff Writers
Washington DC (SPX) Jun 25, 2012
File image.
A team of NOAA-supported scientists is predicting that this year’s Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone could range from a low of approximately 1,197 square miles to as much as 6,213 square miles. The wide range is the result of using two different forecast models. The forecast is based on Mississippi River nutrient inputs compiled annually by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
The smaller dead zone forecast, covering an area slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island, comes from researchers from the University of Michigan. Their predicted size is based solely on the current year’s spring nutrient inputs from the Mississippi River which are significantly lower than average due to drought conditions throughout much of the watershed.
The larger dead zone forecast, the equivalent of an area the size of the state of Connecticut, is from Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and Louisiana State University scientists.
The Louisiana forecast model includes prior year’s nutrient inputs which can remain in bottom sediments and be recycled the following year. Last year’s flood, followed by this year’s low flows, increased the influence of this “carryover effect” on the second model’s prediction.
Hypoxia is caused by excessive nutrient pollution from human activities coupled with other factors that deplete the oxygen required to support most marine life in bottom and near-bottom water.
During May 2012 stream-flow in the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers were nearly half that of normal conditions. This resulted in a decrease in the amount of nitrogen transported by the rivers into the Gulf. According to USGS estimates, 58,100 metric tons of nitrogen (in the form of nitrite plus nitrate) were transported in May 2012 by the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers to the northern Gulf.
The amount of nitrogen transported to the Gulf in May 2012 was 56 percent lower than average May nitrogen loads estimated in the last 33 years.
The two smallest recorded dead zones to date are in 2000 when it measured 1,696 square miles and a 15 square miles dead zone in 1988. Last year’s dead zone measured 6,765 square miles. The largest hypoxic zone measured to date occurred in 2002 encompassing more than 8,400 square miles.
“This forecast is a good example of NOAA, USGS and university partnerships delivering ecological forecasts that quantify the linkages between the watershed and the coast,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator.
“Regardless of the size of the dead zone, we should not lose sight of the ongoing need to reduce the flow of nutrients to the Mississippi River and thus the Gulf.”
“These forecasts are the product of decades of research, monitoring, and modeling on how decisions we make in the vast drainage basin of the Mississippi and its tributaries translates into the health of the coastal zone of the Gulf of Mexico,” said USGS Director Marcia McNutt, Ph.D.
“Comparing the actual hypoxic zone against the predictions will help scientists better understand the multi-year memory of this complex land-sea system, and ultimately better inform options for improving ecosystem productivity.”
The actual size of the 2012 hypoxic zone will be released following a NOAA-supported monitoring survey led by the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium between July 27 and August 3.
Collecting these data is an annual requirement of the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force Action Plan. Additional NOAA-supported surveys led by the National Marine Fisheries Service and Texas A and M University will also provide an indication of the progression of the dead zone during the year.
The average of impacted waters over the past five years is approximately 6,000 square miles, much larger than the 1,900 square miles which is the target goal set by the Gulf of Mexico/Mississippi River Watershed Nutrient Task Force.
The hypoxic zone, that form each spring and summer off the coast of Louisiana and Texas, threaten valuable commercial and recreational Gulf fisheries. In 2009, the dockside value of commercial fisheries in the Gulf was $629 million. Nearly three million recreational fishers further contributed about $10 billion to the Gulf economy, taking 22 million fishing trips
This year’s forecast is just one example of NOAA’s growing ecological forecasting capabilities, supported by both NOAA and USGS science, which allow for the protection of valuable resources using scientific, ecosystem-based approaches.
By Hamish Barwick, Computerworld-Australia Jun 24, 2012 11:30 am
In the wake of the Flashback botnet which targeted Mac computers, Apple has removed a statement from its messages on its website that Mac operating system X (OS X) isn’t susceptible to viruses.
Apple removed the previous statement “It doesn’t get PC viruses” and replaced it with “It’s built to be safe,” and “Safeguard your data. By doing nothing” with “Safety. Built in.” A comparison of the old and new messages is currently available here.
According to Sophos U.S. senior technology consultant Graham Cluley, this is a sign that Apple is starting to take security seriously.
“I view the changes in the messages pushed out by their marketing department as some important baby-steps,” he wrote in a blog entry.
“Let’s hope more Apple Mac owners are also learning to take important security steps — such as installing antivirus protection.”
In addition to changing its marketing messages, Apple has released a security guide for the iPhone operating system iOS and announced in February that OS X 10.8, or Mountain Lion, would include a new feature called Gatekeeper that would restrict which applications users can install on their devices.
Cluley is not the only security expert who has urged Apple to improve its OS protection.
In a recent interview with Computerworld Australia, Kaspersky Lab co-founder Eugene Kaspersky said the company needed to extend time frames for supporting older operating systems. For example, in May this year Apple ended support for OS X 10.5, also known as Leopard, when OS X 10.7 was released.
“Apple has stopped supporting some older operating systems but there are still millions of people using these systems,” he said. “It means if vulnerabilities are found, any kind of bad guys will be free to infect these machines.”
Apple Australia was contacted by Computerworld Australia but declined to comment.
Follow Hamish Barwick on Twitter: @HamishBarwick
Follow Computerworld Australia on Twitter: @ComputerworldAU
The world of malware has, over the last couple of decades, morphed to become not just a mechanism with which to subvert people’s computers and steal money, but also a way for corporations and sovereign states to conduct cyber espionage.
An example of malware being used for industrial cyber espionage emerged two months ago with a worm, which had previously been quite rare, breaking out suddenly in Peru and neighboring countries.
This worm, specific to the electronic drafting software AutoCAD, is called ACAD/Medre.A and is written in AutoLISP, the language that is used to script operations in AutoCAD. ACAD/Medre.A has a very devious agenda: It e-mails copies of the drawings the user opens to over 40 mail boxes hosted at two different Chinese ISPs.
The antivirus firm ESET in San Diego was the first to detect the outbreak in Peru and noted that they could “see detections at specific URLs, which made it clear that a specific website supplied [an infected] AutoCAD template that appears to be the basis for this localized spike … If it is assumed that companies which want to do business with [the company at the URL] have to use this template, it seems logical that the malware mainly shows up in Peru and neighboring countries. The same is true for larger companies with affiliated offices outside this area that have been asked to assist or to verify the – by then – infected project and then [infect] their own environment.”
In other words, someone or some organization — not necessarily in China — planted the infected template. As a result they were able to swipe the drawings of all of the companies competing for some project, presumably to gain an edge in securing business.
ESET estimates that something like 100,000 drawings were stolen before ESET, with the help of Autodesk, the Chinese National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center, and the Chinese ISPs involved, were able to contain the problem. For a detailed look at the technology behind the attack, see the posting “ACAD/Medre.A Technical Analysis” in the ESET Threat Blog.
So industrial cyber espionage is a big deal, but even more impressive and much more worrying is military cyber espionage because the stakes and consequences are much higher.
And there’s a serious problem with military cyber espionage: In the real world if someone attacks you with something like a cruise missile, once it’s landed you won’t be able to put the missile back together and lob it back at whoever sent it. That’s the nature of real-world armaments. You can build really smart and deadly devices and, even if they malfunction, the enemy will very, very rarely be able to turn your technology against you.
Not so with software armaments. Consider the much-discussed Stuxnet, the computer worm that first appeared about two years ago. Stuxnet targets Siemens industrial control systems and is said to be responsible for damaging equipment used by the Iranian nuclear program.
The Stuxnet worm is an impressive example of sophisticated software engineering relying, as it did, on four new zero-day attacks along with several known vulnerability exploits used by other malware.
On top of that, Stuxnet it is very complex. According to an article in Vanity Fair, “In terms of functionality, this was the largest piece of malicious software that most researchers had ever seen, and orders of magnitude more complex in structure. (Malware’s previous heavyweight champion, the Conficker worm, was only one-twentieth the size of this new threat.)”
When the worm was discovered and publicized in June 2010, there was an immediate denial-of-service attack on two mail lists that concern industrial systems security which, it could be assumed, was intended to slow down dissemination of the news to the worm’s targets. You can see that contingent damage was involved in supporting the original attack — a consequence that will become more commonplace in future where military cyber espionage is involved.
Since the first discovery of Stuxnet there have been at least two more variants identified, each incorporating “improvements” that were designed to do things such as increase the infection rate of the malware.
So, who was responsible for this stupendous feat of coding? The Russian mafia? Chinese hackers? Nope, just a few weeks ago it was revealed that Stuxnet was created by a joint U.S. and Israeli intelligence operation called “Operation Olympic Games” which was started under the Bush administration and expanded under the Obama administration!
Apparently Stuxnet did its job because, it is estimated, some 1000 centrifuges used by the Iranians to purify nuclear material that are controlled by Siemens systems, were damaged during the period Stuxnet was active.
Mission of Malware
Whether this was all that was intended is unknown, and a report by the Institute for Science and International Security says: “If Stuxnet’s goal was the destruction of all the centrifuges in the [Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) at Natanz], Stuxnet failed. But if its goal was to destroy a more limited number of centrifuges and set back Iran’s progress in operating FEP while making detection of the malware difficult, it may have succeeded, at least for a while.”
Interestingly, a worm considered a descendent of Stuxnet, Duqu, now appears to be currently designed to steal information, but its modular architecture suggests that it could be tasked with other goals in future versions.
Even more intriguingly, Duqu appears to have been coded in an odd programming language which researchers have called “the Duqu Framework.” This framework has since been identified by Kaspersky Labs as a custom version of C called Object Oriented C complied with the Microsoft Visual Studio compiler.
I’d suggest that Stuxnet and Duqu as military cyber espionage weapons were actually failures, not because they probably only caused limited damage, but because we launched a weapon that can, and will, be turned against us.
Why? Because code is code. It’s a set of ideas frozen into binary and when you execute that code — when you make the ideas actually do something — the bits don’t vanish and the ideas don’t get mangled. They’re still there. No matter how much you encrypt, hide, and obfuscate your code and your ideas, there’s always someone, somewhere who can decrypt, find, and unobfuscate all of it.
Even when the malware is military grade, it would be foolish to assume that the enemy can’t profit from our research and development, because when we attack they get a clean copy of the weapon we attack them with. And there are lots of really clever people out there, clever people who don’t live in the U.S. and who don’t have our best interests at heart. They have access to powerful computers and software just like we do and they are more than capable of decoding what we’ve sent out and turning our ideas against us.
So, my friends, we’re on the verge of a new world of hurt for the enterprise. Cyber espionage, both industrial and military, is coming of age, and in our efforts to compromise the plans and programs of other nations and enterprises, we’re also spreading what are, in effect, the prototypes for sophisticated advanced software weapons that will eventually be available for anyone with the need, the opportunity, and the guts to use them. You think computer security is tough today? Just wait …
Gibbs is insecure in Ventura, Calif. Your threat assessment to gearhead@gibbs.com and follow him on Twitter (@quistuipater) and on Facebook (quistuipater).
Revelations by The New York Times that President Barack Obama in his role as commander in chief ordered the Stuxnet cyberattack against Iran’s uranium-enrichment facility two years ago in cahoots with Israel is generating controversy, with Washington in an uproar over national-security leaks. But the important question is whether this covert action of sabotage against Iran, the first known major cyberattack authorized by a U.S. president, is the right course for the country to take. Are secret cyberattacks helping the U.S. solve geopolitical problems or actually making things worse?
Bruce Schneier, noted security expert and author, whose most recent book is “Liars and Outliers,” argues the U.S. made a mistake with Stuxnet, and he discusses why it’s important for the world to tackle cyber-arms control now in an interview with Network World senior editor Ellen Messmer.
The question is going to be debated whether Stuxnet was a good tactic to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon by sabotaging its facility through a malware attack in a covert action that was ultimately discovered. In an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News last night, former National Security Agency director, retired Gen. Michael Hayden, said he thought it amounted to “taunting Iran.” Based on the mix of military leadership, governmental leadership and ethical questions it raises, is Stuxnet a suitable approach?
There are two parts to this analysis. The first is tactical: Is a cyber-weapon more or less suitable than a conventional weapon? In 2007 Israel attacked a Syrian nuclear facility; it was a conventional attack with warplanes and bombs. Comparing the two, Stuxnet seems far more humane — even though it damaged networks outside of Iran. The other part to the analysis is more strategic. Stuxnet didn’t just damage the Natanz nuclear facility; it damaged the U.S.’s credibility as a fair arbiter and force for peace in cyberspace. Its effects will be felt as other countries ramp up their offensive cyberspace capabilities in response. For that reason, Stuxnet was a destabilizing and dangerous course of action.
David Sanger’s NY Times article of June 1, headlined “Obama order sped up wave of cyberattacks against Iran,” offers a vivid account of how President Obama decided cyberattacks against Iran should proceed through cooperation with Israel through use of the Stuxnet malware. However effective this might have been in stopping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, it’s now widely thought that the Stuxnet malware got out of control, spreading in the wild. What’s your view on this, assuming the Times article is fully accurate?
It seems to be correct.
Sanger’s article was very interesting, and it is worth reading, but it basically confirmed everything we all knew. We knew that Stuxnet was the work of Israel and the United States. We knew that it was intended as a pinpoint attack, and spread beyond its intended target. Other investigative journalists uncovered these truths already. What Sanger’s article added to the discussion was detail about the program from inside both the Obama and the Bush administrations.
Richard Clarke’s book “Cyber War” draws the distinction between cyber-espionage and cyberattacks. He argues cyber-espionage should basically be considered a routine, acceptable practice of any country as part of government intelligence operations. But he argues other state-sponsored operations, such as putting malware secretly into a power grid for example, or launching an actual attack, is distinctly different, and has to be considered in the realm of offensive weapons. Clarke suggests cyberweapons should be subject to arms control agreements of various sorts much as other types of weapons that can be used in war are today. Do you draw the distinction between cyber-espionage and cyberweapons along these lines? And should there be an effort by the U.S. and others to craft treaties related to cyber-arms?
Of course there’s a difference between intelligence gathering and offensive military actions. Throughout history, there has been a bright line between the two. And what’s true in the geopolitics of the physical world is no different in cyberspace. This same distinction also exists in computer security more generally. There is a fundamental difference between passive eavesdropping attacks and more active attacks that delete or overwrite data. As to arms control agreements, I think it is vital for both society and cyberspace that we begin these discussions now. We’re in the early years of a cyberwar arms race, an arms race that will be expensive, destabilizing, and dangerously damaging. It will lead to the militarization of cyberspace, and the transformation of the Internet into something much less free and open. Perhaps it’s too late to reverse this trend — certainly you can argue that military grade cyberweapons like Stuxnet and Flame have already destroyed the U.S.’s credibility as a leader for a free and open Internet — but the only chance we have are cyberweapons treaties.
If so, how do you think that should proceed?
I’m not an idealist. I know that cyberwar treaties will be difficult to negotiate and even more difficult to enforce. Given how easy it is for a country to hide a chemical weapons plant, I know that it will be even easier to hide a cyberweapons plant. I also know that there is a lot of money and power trying to sowcyberwarfears.
But even with all of this, I think there is enormous value in the treaty process — and in the treaties themselves. I think we need to proceed by starting the dialogue. We made a mistake with Stuxnet: We traded a small short-term gain for a large longer-term loss. We can’t undo that, but we can do better in the future.
Yet another criminal has managed to get himself caught after posting on Facebook.
Convicted robber James Tindell skipped out of Oregon earlier this year to avoid court-ordered drug treatment and other conditions he had accepted so as to avoid prison.
Tindell (Source: Multnomah County Sheriff)
But instead of flying under the radar, Tindell made Facebook posts that taunted his probation officer, complained about the judge who sentenced him, and ranted about the criminal justice system. Not only that, he posted things like “I’m in Alabama” and a sonogram of his unborn child that showed the name of the hospital in Alabama where it was taken.
His probation officer spotted the posts and asked prosecutors to issue a nationwide arrest warrant. Tindell was then apprehended after getting pulled over for speeding — another genius move by someone running from the law.
In the end the clueless criminal was ordered to reimburse the state $2600 for flying him back to Oregon and sent to prison for 2½ years.
It’s far from an isolated case.
Last year a thief in Georgia used a cell phone he found in a stolen purse to post a picture of himself on the victim’s Facebook page. He likely didn’t know the phone’s owner had it set up to automatically post photos to the social network.
And in April a dim-witted British crook was busted after a friend posted a photo of him on Facebook with a TV he’d stolen.
Charles Holden stole a plasma TV, a PlayStation, and some games from a house in which he formerly had roomed. He then sold the goods right outside the door while one of his friends snapped a picture of the transaction.
The victim, suspecting Holden, snooped around on his Facebook page as well as those of his friends and spotted the incriminating photo, which led to an arrest.
And this one is classic: A Pennsylvania man back in 2009 stopped to check his Facebook account on a computer in the home he was in the process of robbing. He forgot to log out before taking off with his loot.
Of course, the victim later noticed his mistake and gave police identifying information to make a speedy arrest.
Although you’d think enough of these stories have surfaced that malefactors would
A lot of hardcore preppers insist that you have a bug out bag and a bug out location. Many of them say that when the SHTF, the cities will burn to the ground. And even if they don’t burn, the people living in them will starve to death or be murdered by looters.
Personally, I don’t think things will ever get quite that bad. (The only exception would be if there were an EMP blast or a nuclear war, but that is beyond the scope of this site.) The government has contingency plans for natural disasters such as hurricanes or earthquakes. I’m not saying they’ll do a great job (for example, FEMA after hurricane Katrina), but usually order will be restored in a few days, long before people start killing each other for food. There are also contingency plans for an economic collapse. There have been hundreds of examples of economic collapse in history, and it almost never happens overnight. Things can get really bad, but at the same time the descent is slow enough to where the government and the people can adapt and avoid absolute chaos.
So my point is: It’s not as dangerous to be in the city during a disaster as most people claim. And if things actually get so bad in the cities that you can’t survive there, you won’t be much better off in the country, anyway. I want to show you a quote from The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse. The author, Fernando Ferfal Aguirre, was living in Argentina during the hyperinflation and economic disaster it experienced in 2001. Here’s what he has to say about living in the country:
…the kind of home invasions people living in the country have suffered here in Argentina are the stuff of nightmares. The same tranquility [in the country] that people like so much works in the bad guys’ favor. You can scream all you want, but no one will hear you. They can spend days in your house raping and torturing, without worry if a neighbor saw them…
You might be planning on having guards posted 24/7 and that you’ll shoot first and ask questions later. But unless you have an army at your disposal, you could easily find yourself overwhelmed by the criminal gangs that head into the countryside. The reason there will be so many criminal gangs in the country is they know the police will be too occupied in the city to respond in time, and they know people in the country have lots of food and weapons. And sure, you could shoot everybody that steps food on your property, but that’s a good way to wind up in jail. Just because there’s been a disaster doesn’t mean the police won’t eventually be there to lock you up. You have to be realistic.
Imagine the shit has hit the fan and you didn’t bother to prepare. A pandemic is spreading across the country like a wildfire, maybe an earthquake has knocked out the power and water. Perhaps there’s been a terrorist attack and part of your town is in flames, or hyperinflation has hit a critical point where prices are rising throughout the day. If something like this occurs, you’ll have to run to the nearest grocery store and get what you can, while you can.
Unfortunately, you won’t be able to get everything you need to last for several months, but it might still be possible to get enough to ride out whatever disaster has occurred. Pull the kids out of school and keep your cell phone handy. You and your family will have to work together and keep in touch. If you own multiple cars, take them to the gas station caravan-style and fill up. Also buy some containers and fill them with extra gas.
On your way to the grocery store, call your doctor to renew any prescriptions you might need. When you get there, each of you should grab a different cart and take a different part of the list. Don’t get into fights with other last-minute shoppers. And if the store doesn’t have something you’re looking for, forget about it and move on. Maybe the next store you go to will have it.
You will need cash! First go to an ATM and withdraw as much as you can, or go to a store that offers cash back and get as much as they’ll allow. Some stores might not be able to accept plastic in this situation. Hopefully you already have a lot of cash on hand because if the power is out everywhere you just might be up the creek with no paddle.
The list is below. I suggest sending the kids or the wife to get the non-food items as most people will be fighting over the food and water.
I haven’t visited my own site in a while. Unfortunately, despite it’s popularity, it’s not the kind of site that generates a lot of revenue and I need all the money I can get to continue prepping for the future. I hope it’s helped many beginners get started.
Since my last post, I’ve had a few people ask me what I expect to happen. In other words, what exactly am I preparing for? Do I think there will be a nuclear war, bioterrorism, a zombie outbreak, or what? There are many types of survivalists, but personally I am expecting an economic depression far worse than the Great Depression, a disaster that will literally be talked about for centuries.
Why do I expect something so horrible to happen? First, you should know that I subscribe to the Austrian School of Economics, the only economic theory which has accurately predicted every economic downturn since before the Great Depression. It maintains that government intervention, taxation and deficits harm economies while free markets and minimal government lead to prosperity. If you understand Austrian economics and take at look at what’s happening in our country, it’s not hard to predict what’s going to happen. I’m no expert, but I’m going to lay out the basics as well as I can so that you will understand what’s coming.
The Federal Reserve (essentially the central bank of the United States) is the cause of all the booms and busts since 1913. In a truly capitalist country, the market would decide where to set interest rates (the rate at which banks borrow money). But the Fed insists on controlling them. And when the Fed keeps interest rates too low, it makes it possible for the government to run larger deficits.
Part 1: There was a boom in the late 1990′s (mostly in tech stocks) because of the easy money made available by artificially low interest rates. When people realized how overvalued those stocks were, it led to a bust in 2000, and a major recession would have cured the problem and put the economy back on stable footing. Contrary to popular belief, recessions are the cure because they cause people to stop wasting their money and start saving again. The recession would have been very short. But George W. Bush didn’t want to inherit a recession, so he and the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, decided the Fed should lower interest rates even more. This delayed the major recession we needed, made the problem much worse, and led to…
Part 2: A boom in housing in the mid 2000′s. When people started defaulting on their mortgages and banks realized how overvalued houses were, it led to a bust in 2008, and a short depression would have fixed the problem (read about the Depression of 1920. The government did nothing and the economy recovered in 1 year). A short depression would have hurt a lot more than what we’re going through now, but at least things would be back to normal by now. But Obama didn’t want to inherit a depression, so he and the new chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, decided the Fed should lower interest rates to virtually zero. This delayed the depression, made the problem much much worse, and led to…
Intern Daily
by Staff Writers
Providence RI (SPX) Jun 25, 2012
Qi Wang swirls a solution of selenium nanoparticles in the lab. Coatings of the nanoparticles appear effective in fighting staph bacteria in medical device materials, according to a new study. Credit: Webster Lab/Brown University.
Selenium is an inexpensive element that naturally belongs in the body. It is also known to combat bacteria. Still, it had not been tried as an antibiotic coating on a medical device material. In a new study, Brown University engineers report that when they used selenium nanoparticles to coat polycarbonate, the material of catheters and endotracheal tubes, the results were significant reductions in cultured populations of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, sometimes by as much as 90 percent.
“We want to keep the bacteria from generating a biofilm,” said Thomas Webster, professor of engineering and orthopaedics, who studies how nanotechnology can improve medical implants. He is the senior author of the paper, published online this week in the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research A.
Biofilms are notoriously tough colonies of bacteria to treat because they are often able to resist antibiotic drugs.
“The longer we can delay or inhibit completely the formation of these colonies, the more likely your immune system will clear them,” Webster said. “Putting selenium on there could buy more time to keep an endotracheal tube in a patient.”
Meanwhile, Webster said, because selenium is actually a recommended nutrient, it should be harmless in the body at the concentrations found in the coatings. Also, it is much less expensive than silver, a less biocompatible material that is the current state of the art for antibacterial medical device coatings.
Webster has been investigating selenium nanoparticles for years, mostly for their possible anticancer effects. As he began to look at their antibiotic properties, he consulted with Hasbro Children’s Hospital pediatrician Keiko Tarquinio, assistant professor of pediatrics, who has been eager to find ways to reduce biofilms on implants.
Studying selenium For this study, Webster and first author Qi Wang grew selenium nanoparticles of two different size ranges and then used solutions of them to coat pieces of polycarbonate using a quick, simple process. On some of the polycarbonate, they then applied and ripped off tape not only to test the durability of the coatings but also to see how a degraded concentration of selenium would perform against bacteria.
On coated polycarbonate – both the originally coated and the tape-tested pieces – Wang and Webster used electron and atomic force microscopes to measure the concentration of nanoparticles and how much surface area of selenium was exposed to interact with bacteria.
One of their findings was that after the tape test, smaller nanoparticles adhered better to the polycarbonate than larger ones.
Then they were ready for the key step: experiments that exposed cultured staph bacteria to polycarbonate pieces, some of which were left uncoated as controls. Among the coated pieces, some had the larger nanoparticles and some had the smaller ones. Some from each of those groups had been degraded by the tape, and others had not.
All four types of selenium coatings proved effective in reducing staph populations after 24, 48, and 72 hours compared to the uncoated controls. The most potent effects – reductions larger than 90 percent after 24 hours and as much as 85 percent after 72 hours – came from coatings of either particle size range that had not been degraded by the tape. Among those coatings that had been subjected to the tape test, the smaller nanoparticle coatings proved more effective.
Staph populations exposed to any of the coated polycarbonate pieces peaked at the 48-hour timeframe, perhaps because that is when the bacteria could take fullest advantage of the in vitro culture medium. But levels always fell back dramatically by 72 hours.
The next step, Webster said, is to begin testing in animals. Such in vivo experiments, he said, will test the selenium coatings in a context where the bacteria have more available food but will also face an immune system response.
The results may ultimately have commercial relevance. Former graduate students developed a business plan for the selenium nanoparticle coatings while in school and have since licensed the technology from Brown for their company, Axena Technologies.
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Today’s topic is another recent survey, this one commissioned by 
Has Microsoft has figured out a way to bug Skype calls? A report published in Slate late last week suggests this might maybe possibly be theoretically true — cue the InterWeb’s full-blown paranoia party.
Microsoft directly denied the claims made in 
Angus Robertson MP for Moray
As many as 300,000 PCs and Macs will drop off the Internet in about 65 hours unless their owners heed last-minute calls to scrub their machines of malware.
The FBI’s “Operation Ghost Click” ended with arrests of six Estonian men — a seventh, a Russian, remains at large — the C&C seizures, and the substitution of the replacement servers. Without the substitutes, DNSChanger-infected systems would have been immediately knocked off the Internet.
We’ve all Googled ourselves from time to time, but British Airways has crossed the creepy line for looking up its own passengers on Google Image Search.
Privacy advocates this week said they are dismayed, but not surprised about a New York Criminal Court judge’s decision 
A resume builderIt operates behind the commercial and corporate job boards to capture and store submitted rsums.
This is where creative writing, journalism-style story structuring and career history intersect to make a spectacular resume . Not only does the resume need to satisfy the ATS for keyword searching, but it also needs to be readable and compelling for the hiring manager who calls it up in order to find out about career history and accomplishments. You can’t just pile up the keywords; you have to tell your story in a way that will make a hiring manager want to contact you, while using keywords strategically.
The Federal Communications Commission wants to reopen an inquiry into whether its regulations do enough to protect consumers from harmful radiation from cell phones.
Julius GenachowskiNothing is likely to change, though: the FCC says that it was confident that these levels do not need to be changed and still sufficiently protect consumers.
Multiple scientific reports and the manufacturers themselves indicate no conclusive evidence supports concerns that the radiation from cell phones is actually harmful. While there is evidence that this radiation 
Dr Pozzi is confident that the device can be improved to deliver a much greater power output. Image source: 
The research has been presented today in IOP Publishing’s journal 
In a blog post last week, Andrew Conway, a Cloudmark researcher, said a substantial increase in spam reports last weekend were traced to LinkedIn password reset e-mail alerts
The 
Mark J. Terrill / AP
Mark J. Terrill / AP
Mark J. Terrill / AP
Apple removed the previous statement “It doesn’t get PC viruses” and replaced it with “It’s built to be safe,” and “Safeguard your data. By doing nothing” with “Safety. Built in.” A comparison of the old and new messages is currently available 
An example of malware being used for industrial cyber espionage emerged two months ago with a worm, which had previously been quite rare, breaking out suddenly in Peru and neighboring countries.
Not so with software armaments. Consider 
Interestingly, a worm considered a descendent of Stuxnet, 
Tindell (Source: Multnomah County Sheriff)
A lot of hardcore preppers insist that you have a bug out bag and a bug out location. Many of them say that when the SHTF, the cities will burn to the ground. And even if they don’t burn, the people living in them will starve to death or be murdered by looters.
Imagine the shit has hit the fan and you didn’t bother to prepare. A pandemic is spreading across the country like a wildfire, maybe an earthquake has knocked out the power and water. Perhaps there’s been a terrorist attack and part of your town is in flames, or hyperinflation has hit a critical point where prices are rising throughout the day. If something like this occurs, you’ll have to run to the nearest grocery store and get what you can, while you can.
