Burger King has ditched an Irish supplier of beef that is at the centre of a food scare after horse meat was discovered in beefburgers sold in Britain and Ireland, where it is deemed to be a taboo.
The US fast-food giant said Wednesday it has decided to replace all Silvercrest beef products in Britain and Ireland with those from another supplier.
“This is a voluntary and precautionary measure,” Burger King said in a statement.
“We are working diligently to identify suppliers that can produce 100 percent pure Irish and British beef products that meet our high quality standards.”
Flash Flood in Ireland on Friday, 14 December, 2012 at 08:15 (08:15 AM) UTC.
Description
Councils in Dublin city and Cork city issued flood alerts for today as Met Eireann warned of very high tides and 25mm of rainfall. AA Roadwatch reported flooding in low-lying areas of Cork city this morning, in parts of Kilkenny city and on the Gorey to Wexford Road. Dublin City Council has warned that today’s tide is predicted to be extremely high and above the council’s tide alert levels. Following am meeting of the council’s flooding action group it will take a number of actions are being taken as a precautionary measure. Car parks at Sandymount Promenade and at Clontarf are closed, flood gates on the River Dodder were to be closed for the weekend, flood defences on the River Tolka are being put in place, the Liffey Boardwalk defences will be closed today and the Spencer Dock Flood gates have been closed.
Dublin City Council have a stock of sandbags that will be used by drainage staff if required in Sandymount and Clontarf. Marine Drive will be closed at the junction with the Beach Road and Strand Road after rush hour this morning using sandbags, but will reopen in the afternoon. Council staff are on standby should any flooding occur. Cork City Council urged householders and businesses to take precautionary measures to protect properties. It issued a flood warning for parts of the city centre over the next four days. “A tidal surge and strong south to south easterly winds are predicted over the next number of days” with particular severity for this morning, it said.
Cork City Council say the areas at risk of flooding include South Terrace, Trinity Bridge, Georges Quay, Cotter Street, Stable Lane, Union Quay, Morrisons Quay, Proby’s Quay, French’s Quay, Crosses Green, Sharman Crawford Street, Wandesford Quay, Lavitts Quay, Kyrl’s Street and Kyrl’s Quay, Coal Quay, South Mall, Oliver Plunkett Street, Pembroke Street, Prince’s Street, Marlborough Street, Cook Street, Winthrop Street, Kennedy Quay, Centre Park Road and Monahan Road. Met Eireann has warned of very high tides, low pressure and onshore southeast gales with possible rainfall of 20mm to 25mm giving potential for coastal flooding on the south and east coasts tonight and tomorrow morning.
Terremotos de los últimos 2 días en las Islas Canarias de magnitud igual o superior a 1.5 o sentidos:Earthquakes for the last 2 days on the Canary Islands magnitude equal or greater than 1.5 registered
JAKARTA, Indonesia – A volcano in northern Indonesia has spewed hot smoke and ash thousands of feet into the air in two new eruptions.
Mount Lokon on Sulawesi island had been dormant before rumbling back to life last year.
Government volcanologist Hendrasto says it unleashed two strong eruptions Friday.
Residents have been put on alert, but no evacuations are planned since the nearest villages are beyond the danger area about 2.5 kilometres (1.5 miles) from the crater.
Mount Lokon’s last major eruption in 1991 killed a Swiss hiker and forced thousands to flee. The volcano is one of five on high alert in Indonesia. The archipelago straddles the “Pacific Ring of Fire” and has more active volcanoes than any other nation.
Niamey, Niger – At least 92 people have died in floods that have swept Niger following torrential rains, according to the latest data released by the Prime minister’s office on Friday. The data indicate that 72,396 families are affected with 511,484 people being victims, as at Thursday. All the country’s eight regions are affected by floods with Tillabéry, Dosso and Niamey being the worst affected. Huge damage is reported on basic socio-economic infrastructure and other items crucial to the people.
Rice crops, schools, health centres, roads, bridges, dams have all been affected while a huge quantities of food and many cattle have been swept away by flood waters.
The chairperson of the technical committee in charge of managing the floods, Mrs Saadatou Malam Barmou, said that thanks to national solidarity and international cooperation, food needs are covered for 45 days out.
Water containers have been distributed to victims to fetch potable water to reduce water-related diseases. The ministry of Health has also set up health centres at the sites and mobile teams to solve health problems.
The government has made available 3,400 tonnes of cereals for the victims and raised 700 million CFAF to support re-housing and buy additional food.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Flooding continues to cause problems throughout Southcentral Alaska.
Jeremy Zidek, spokesman for the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, says in a release that there have been reports of flooding, landslides and road closures throughout the area.
But there has been no report of major injuries.
Residents in East Talkeetna are being told to evacuate because of flooding.
The Red Cross has established three shelters in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and helped with another in Seward.
Weather problems are not confined to Southcentral Alaska.
Zidek says a landslide has blocked access from the village of Chenega to its airport, and state transportation officials are working to restore access. And an assessment team is in Tanacross to evaluate damage from Sunday’s wind storm.
Cameroon authorities have found six more bodies in flood waters, bringing the number killed to as high as 40 in the wake of tropical downpours and the breaching of a dam in the west African country. The inundation in the Far North Region has affected more than 26,000, officials said Thursday, and in neighboring Nigeria at least 15 deaths are blamed on waters rushing into the country from Cameroon’s compromised Lagdo Dam on the Benoue River. Cameroon’s Communication Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary has described the flooding as “a calamity” and called for urgent action to save lives and property. Local officials are calling it the worst flood disaster in over 60 years. Water has submerged swaths of the North Region downstream, wiping out homes, farms and livestock, and Cameroon’s government has dispatched a military contingency to assist and evacuate victims.
Residents of Talkeetna are being asked to evacuate the town after its dike system against heavy flooding failed Friday, according to local firefighters. The evacuation is now voluntary, although an initial order was mandatory. Talkeetna Fire Department Battalion Chief Johnny Murdoch, the incident commander for flooding in the area, says the Susitna River started backing up to the Talkeetna River, causing the dike to fail. According to local officials the decision to evacuate Talkeetna was made by Alaska State Troopers, with authorities expecting water to continue rising Friday afternoon. The Associated Press reports that overnight rains in Talkeetna ranged from half an inch to 1 1/2 inches over a 6- to 8-hour period. The Talkeetna River was within a foot of its record stage of 17.4 feet, with officials telling the AP about 35 percent of Talkeetna has some form of water coverage. Students from Talkeetna’s elementary school were being bused to the local high school Friday. Traffic was blocked from entering Talkeetna until the evacuation was no longer mandatory, a change made shortly before 2 p.m. In a flood warning effective through 10 p.m. Friday, the National Weather Service says a levee protecting the town was breached as of 1 p.m. The Talkeetna River is 4 feet above flood stage, and expected to crest Friday evening. âAll persons in the vicinity of Talkeetna should take precautions now to protect life and property,â meteorologists wrote. The NWS advises people to avoid crossing flowing streams — even small ones â on foot, or driving across flooded roadways in cars, under the slogan âTurn around, donât drown.â
This shows Fukushima after a tsunami in March 2011. Credit: IAEA
The tsunami in Japan in March 2011 unleashed a series of negligence related with the resulting nuclear disaster. A scientific study headed by Spanish researchers has for the first time identified those atomic power plants that are more prone to suffering the effects of a tsunami. In total, 23 plants are in dangerous areas, including Fukushima I, with 74 reactors located in the east and southeast of Asia.
Tsunamis are synonymous with the destruction of cities and homes and since the Japanese coast was devastated in March 2011 we now know that they cause nuclear disaster, endanger the safety of the population and pollute the environment. As such phenomena are still difficult to predict, a team of scientists have assessed “potentially dangerous” areas that are home to completed nuclear plants or those under construction. In the study published in the ‘Natural Hazards’ journal, the researchers drew a map of the world’s geographic zones that are more at risk of large tsunamis. Based on this data, 23 nuclear power plants with 74 reactors have been identified in high risk areas. One of them includes Fukushima I. Out of them, 13 plants with 29 reactors are active; another four, that now have 20 reactors, are being expanded to house nine more; and there are seven new plants under construction with 16 reactors. “We are dealing with the first vision of the global distribution of civil nuclear power plants situated on the coast and exposed to tsunamis,” as explained to SINC by José Manuel Rodríguez-Llanes, coauthor of the study and researcher at the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. The authors used historical, archaeological, geological and instrumental records as a base for determining tsunami risk. Despite the fact that the risk of these natural disasters threatens practically the entire western coast of the American continent, the Spanish/Portuguese Atlantic Coast and the coast of North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and areas of Oceania, especially in South and Southeast Asia are at greater risk due to the presence of atomic power stations.
23 nuclear power plants are in tsunami risk areas Credit: SINC For Debarati Guha-Sapir, another coauthor of the study and CRED researcher, “the impact of natural disaster is getting worse due to the growing interaction with technological installations.” China: a nuclear power in the making Some 27 out of 64 nuclear reactors that are currently under construction in the world are found in China. This is an example of the massive nuclear investment of the Asian giant. “The most important fact is that 19 (two of which are in Taiwan) out of the 27 reactors are being built in areas identified as dangerous,” state the authors of the study. In the case of Japan, which in March 2011 suffered the consequences of the worse tsunami in its history, there are seven plants with 19 reactors at risk, one of which is currently under construction. South Korea is now expanding two plants at risk with five reactors. India (two reactors) and Pakistan (one reactor) could also feel the consequences of a tsunami in the plants. The ghost of Fukushima “The location of nuclear installations does not only have implications for their host countries but also for the areas which could be affected by radioactive leaks,” as outlined to SINC by Joaquín Rodríguez-Vidal, lead author of the study and researcher at the Geodynamics and Paleontology Department of the University of Huelva. According to the study, we should learn our lessons from the Fukushima accident. For the authors, prevention and previous scientific studies are the best tools for avoiding such disasters. “But since the tsunami in 2004 the Indian Ocean region is still to take effective political measures,” warn the researchers. The Fukushima crisis took place in a highly developed country with one of the highest standards in scientific knowledge and technological infrastructure. “If it had occurred in a country less equipped for dealing with the consequences of catastrophe, the impact would have been a lot more serious for the world at large,” claim the experts. Therefore, Professor Rodríguez-Vidal recommends the drafting of more local analyses that consider the seismic amplification of each nuclear power plant and determine the adaptation of installation identified in the study. More information: Rodríguez-Vidal, Joaquin ; Rodríguez-Llanes, Jose M. ; Guha-Sapir, Debarati. “Civil nuclear power at risk of tsunamis “
Natural Hazards 63 (2) : 1273-1278 DOI: 10.1007/s11069-012-0162-0 , septiembre de 2012.
Last week, Japan surprised the world by announcing that it plans to abandon atomic energy completely by the 2030s. But now in an abrupt turnaround, the Japanese Cabinet appears to be backpedaling on that decision, dropping any mention of the 2030s deadline in its approval of Japan’s new energy policy.
Arnie Gundersen @Congressional Briefing Cannon House Office Building — Room 121
About 11:05 of 9/22/2012, Tepco dropped a steel frame of 7m long and 470kg into the SFP of reactor3. 514 assemblies of spent fuel and 52 fuel assemblies are kept in the pool.
Tepco was removing debris by the remote controlling crane and dropped it into the pool mistakenly.
The steel frame was 30cm×20cm×7m, 470kg. It was dropped from South-East side.
Tepco states the radiation level did not change, the dosimeter set 2m above the pool did not measure any change in radiation level either. Water level and the temperature did not change.
It hasn’t happened that such a large material dropped into the pool. Tepco is planning to investigate if the fuel assemblies are not damaged by underwater camera.
PRISTINA, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) – At least five people in the Balkans have died from West Nile virus and several dozen others have been hospitalized in the past four weeks, according to health authorities in Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Croatia.
West Nile virus is a mosquito-borne disease usually found in temperate and tropical regions. While many cases are mild and have no symptoms, severe disease symptoms can include headaches, high fever, neck stiffness, coma, tremors, convulsions, muscle weakness and paralysis.
Kosovo confirmed its first fatality on Wednesday, saying the victim was a woman from central Kosovo who died on Sept 14. Macedonia’s health officials said on Thursday one woman had died and two other people were infected with the virus.
A spokesman for the Kosovo Health Ministry told Reuters on Thursday two other people who died recently were also suspected of having the same virus, but the cases had not been confirmed with laboratory blood tests.
The United States is currently experiencing one of its worst outbreaks of West Nile virus since 2003.
In Serbia, three people have died and 35 were hospitalized since mid-August.
“This is the first time the West Nile virus has been officially registered in Serbia,” the country’s Department for Public Health said in a statement.
All the infected people were over 50 and had other chronic diseases, it said. Serbia’s western neighbor Croatia has registered five probable cases of the virus but no deaths.
Measles epidemic Congo – An outbreak of measles, which has been raging in Likouala, North-eastern Congo since April, has already killed 22 people, the state-run radio said Friday.
The epidemic, which initially hit Liranga and Bétou, have now reached Impfondo and Epena.
Following the outbreak, the Ministry of Health Thursday launched a 5-day vaccination campaign against measles in the district.
Vaccination teams will travel throughout the localities of Likouala, which since 2009 has sheltered over 100,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), who are fleeing inter-ethnic violence in the Equateur province.
- In light of confirmation of a measles case in a school-aged child in Ulster County, State Health Commissioner Nirav R. Shah, M.D., M.P.H., advises all New Yorkers to be vaccinated against measles. “Many people think measles is a childhood disease of the past, but it remains a highly-contagious viral disease that can cause serious health problems and even death,” Shah said. “The good news is that measles is preventable, and people who are vaccinated can protect themselves against the disease.” The current Ulster County measles case involves a child who attends a school where nearly half of the students are not vaccinated against measles. Although vaccination against measles is one of the required immunizations for school children in New York, exemptions from the requirement may be granted by a school. The Ulster County Health Department is working with the school district to protect other school children from measles. Unvaccinated children who attend the same Ulster County school as the child with measles and unvaccinated school staff are being excluded from the school for 21 days to help prevent them from contracting or spreading the disease. Individuals are not at risk of contracting measles if they are immune. A person is considered immune if they were born before January 1, 1957, have a history of physician-diagnosed measles, a blood test confirming immunity, or have received two doses of the MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) vaccine. Measles is a highly contagious respiratory disease caused by a virus and is spread by direct contact with nasal or throat secretions of infected people. Due to widespread immunization in the United States, the measles virus does not circulate in this country, but is present in some foreign countries, including some in Europe and Asia. It is strongly recommended that anyone traveling to a country where measles is circulating be immunized before their trip; those who are not immunized could potentially contract the disease while abroad and infect other non-immunized individuals upon their return back to the U.S.
Biohazard name:
Measles
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
The international humanitarian agency Oxfam is warning that living conditions of refugees in a camp in Upper Nile state are becoming increasingly desperate, and more people will probably die if help does not arrive soon. More than 100,000 refugees have fled fighting between Sudanese armed forces and rebels in Sudan’s Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan states. At least 16 refugees have died in the past two weeks from an outbreak of Hepatitis E, according to the U.N. Pauline Ballaman, Oxfam’s South Sudan director, said the best way to curb the spread of the water-borne disease is to relocate thousands of Sudanese refugees to a safer place. “The government of South Sudan and UNHCR, who are the lead agencies, would encourage them to look at all other possibilities because this is not going to be a sustainable job or solution,” Ballaman said. South Sudan and the UN refugee agency considered relocating the refugees to areas along the Nile River, according to Ballaman, but she said no decision has been made so far. Ballaman said more people are showing symptoms of Hepatitis E. She added, “there are a lot more people affected and, of course, it is far more serious for the nursing and pregnant mothers and young children, and malnutrition kicks in as well,” According to Ballaman, no season is favorable to housing more than 100,000 refugees. Widespread flooding during South Sudan’s rainy season is the problem right now, but when the dry season arrives the problem will be not enough water.
Biohazard name:
Hepatitis E. Outbreak
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
Symptoms:
Status:
confirmed
23.09.2012
Epidemic Hazard
USA
State of New York, New Paltz [Mountain Laurel Waldorf School]
A case of measles has been confirmed in a student who attends the Mountain Laurel Waldorf School in New Paltz, according to the Dutchess County Department of Health. The measles case was reported by Dutchess County Health Commissioner Dr. Michael Caldwell in a press release emailed to local media outlets late Friday. It was not immediately clear why the release came from a Dutchess County official rather than one in Ulster County, where the private school is located, and the name and hometown of the infected person were not provided. Caldwell said his office has “been in close communication” with the Ulster County Department of Health and the state Department of Health. Caldwell said anyone who has visited the school since Sept. 10 or has had contact with anyone from the school since that date should make sure their measles vaccinations are up to date. Those who lack proper vaccinations should consult with a doctor. Caldwell said his department has learned that a number of students at the New Paltz school have not been vaccinated for measles, meaning they could become ill and put others at risk. Caldwell said all medical practices and laboratories in the area should be on high alert that there may be a number of children and family members who have been exposed and could spread the disease further. Incidents of measles, which is highly contagious, have increased in the United States recently due to a growing number of unvaccinated individuals who travel to countries where measles is prevalent, Caldwell said.
Biohazard name:
Measles
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
A massive fireball was seen right across Ireland last night which may be “one of the best ever seen” in Europe and was a “huge event”, according to Astronomy Ireland. The trail of fragments passed across the sky at about 10.55pm with sightings reported from Dublin, Donegal, Cork, Sligo, Carlow, Longford, Antrim and across Britain and as far away as as The Netherlands. It was “very unusual to see it in multiple countries,” David Moore of Astronomy Ireland said. “I’ve never seen one fragmented like that and streaked across the sky,” he said. The fireball later exploded into fragments. Mr Moore said the cause of the fireball was not yet clear. “It is a piece of space debris, but whether it is man made or natural is not known,” he said. He said it was too slow for natural debris and was going the wrong direction for man-made debris. “It is probably a space rock that has skidded across the atmosphere.” Meteorites will have been dropped “but whether they landed in Ireland or at sea we will have to figure out”, he said. Witnesses described a trail of seven to 12 fireballs in a straight line across the sky. No sound was to be heard either by witnesses in the city or the countryside. Kielder Observatory in Britain last night reported a sighting of a “huge fireball” .Mr Moore asked for witnesses to submit a fireball report to the Astronomy Ireland website “This will help us to triangulate the path,” he said. Twitter and Facebook filled with reports of the strange sightings last night, with meteor trending on Twitter in Ireland. “Spotted what looked like about eight fireballs travelling east to west over the M1 at Santry, Dublin at 10.56pm. Amazing,” wrote one tweeter last night. The Irish Coast Guard had reports from the north coast right down the east coast.
22.09.2012
Event into space
United Kingdom
Scotland and England, [Between Airdrie and Arbroath, Greater Manchester]
A suspected meteorite shower over Scotland has prompted a flurry of 999 calls from worried members of the public. Concerned callers from Airdrie to Arbroath likened the lights they saw in the sky to flares, fireworks and even a plane crash. Coastguard and police forces up and down the country were inundated with reports from around 11pm on Friday night. A spokesman for Forth Coastguard said: “From talking to other stations and to the RAF it’s almost certainly meteorite activity. “Calls came in from all over the place, thick and fast. We’ve had people report possible plane crashes, and others the weirdest fireworks they’ve ever seen. “Folk just haven’t known how to describe what they’ve seen. It’s quite extraordinary.” The spokesman said reports had come from Crail, Johnshaven and Arbroath. Clyde Coastguard said it had received a “flurry” of calls reporting flares seen in Drummore, Airdrie and Brodick on Arran. A spokeswoman said: “When we get it all over and at the same time then we attribute them to meteorites. There was meteorite activity forecast from September 15 to 21.” Shetland Coastguard said a report of a flare at 11.10pm at Duncansby Head near John O’Groats was thought to be part of the meteorite shower.
MessageToEagle.com – Beautiful and mysterious structures known as superbubbles result from the stellar winds and supernovae of OB [spectral types O or early-type B] associations.
Astronomers believe they play play a fundamental role in the structure and energetics of the ISM [interstellar medium] in star-forming galaxies.
Their influence may also dominate the relationship between the different interstellar gas phases.
How do superbubbles form and evolve?
How do they affect the local and global ISM?
The Magellanic Clouds provide a superior opportunity to study this shell-forming activity, since both stellar content and gaseous structure can be examined in detail.
A superbubble in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) was observed by astronomers using Chandra X-ray Observatory.
LMC is a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, located about 160,000 light years from Earth.
Many new stars, some of them very massive, are forming in the star cluster NGC 1929, which is embedded in the nebula N44.
The massive stars produce intense radiation, expel matter at high speeds, and race through their evolution to explode as supernovas.
The winds and supernova shock waves carve out huge cavities called superbubbles in the surrounding gas. X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue) show hot regions created by these winds and shocks, while infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope (red) outline where the dust and cooler gas are found.
The optical light from the 2.2m Max-Planck-ESO telescope (yellow) in Chile shows where ultraviolet radiation from hot, young stars is causing gas in the nebula to glow.
A long-running problem in high-energy astrophysics has been that some superbubbles in the LMC, including N44, give off a lot more X-rays than expected from models of their structure.
A Chandra study published in 2011 showed that there are two extra sources of the bright X-ray emission: supernova shock waves striking the walls of the cavities, and hot material evaporating from the cavity walls.
The observations show no evidence for an enhancement of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium in the cavities, thus ruling out this possibility as an explanation for the bright X-ray emission.
Click on image to enlarge
NGC 1929 is a star cluster embedded in the N44 nebula, which is found in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Massive stars in the cluster produce intense radiation, expel matter at high speeds, and explode relatively quickly as supernovas.
Winds from the massive stars and shocks from the supernovas carve out “superbubbles” in the gas seen in X-rays by Chandra (blue). Infrared data show dust (red) and cooler gas and optical light (yellow) reveals where ultraviolet radiation is causing the gas to glow. Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/U.Mich./S.Oey, IR: NASA/JPL, Optical: ESO/WFI/2.2-m
This is the first time that the data have been good enough to distinguish between different sources of the X-rays produced by superbubbles.
The Chandra study of N44 and another superbubble in the LMC was led by Anne Jaskot from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The co-authors were Dave Strickland from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, Sally Oey from University of Michigan, You-Hua Chu from University of Illinois and Guillermo Garcia-Segura from Instituto de Astronomia-UNAM in Ensenada, Mexico.
MessageToEagle.com – Cassini spacecraft has taken great photos of Saturn and its largest moon, Titan.
The colors are spectacular and on one of the images you can even see the changing hues of Saturn’s northern and southern hemispheres as they pass from one season to the next.
Upon Cassini’s arrival at Saturn eight years ago, Saturn’s northern winter hemisphere was an azure blue.
Now that winter is encroaching on the planet’s southern hemisphere and summer on the north, the color scheme is reversing: blue is tinting the southern atmosphere and is fading from the north.
Some of these views, such as those of the polar vortex, are only possible because Cassini’s newly inclined — or tilted — orbits allow more direct viewing of the polar regions of Saturn and its moons.
Click on image to enlargeColorful Colossi and Changing Hues
A giant of a moon appears before a giant of a planet undergoing seasonal changes in this natural color view of Titan and Saturn from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.
Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, measures 3,200 miles, or 5,150 kilometers, across and is larger than the planet Mercury. Cassini scientists have been watching the moon’s south pole since a vortex appeared in its atmosphere in 2012.
As the seasons have changed in the Saturnian system, and spring has come to the north and autumn to the south, the azure blue in the northern Saturnian hemisphere that greeted Cassini upon its arrival in 2004 is now fading. The southern hemisphere, in its approach to winter, is taking on a bluish hue. This change is likely due to the reduced intensity of ultraviolet light and the haze it produces in the hemisphere approaching winter, and the increasing intensity of ultraviolet light and haze production in the hemisphere approaching summer. Image credit: NASA
Scientists are looking forward to seeing more of the same — new phenomena like Titan’s south polar vortex and changes wrought by the passage of time and seasons — during the remainder of Cassini’s mission.
“Cassini has been in orbit now for the last eight years, and despite the fact that we can’t know exactly what the next five years will show us, we can be certain that whatever it is will be wondrous,” said Carolyn Porco, imaging team lead based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.“It is so fantastic to experience, through the instruments of Cassini, seasonal changes in the Saturn system,” said Amanda Hendrix, deputy project scientist, based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
“Some of the changes we see in the data are completely unexpected, while some occur like clockwork on a seasonal timescale.
It’s an exciting time to be at Saturn.”
Click on image to enlargeObscured by Rings
Saturn’s rings obscure part of Titan’s colorful visage in this image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. The south polar vortex that first appeared in Titan’s atmosphere in 2012 is visible at the bottom of this view. Image credit: NASA
Click on image to enlargeA Ring of Color
Titan’s north polar hood can be seen at the top of this view, and a hint of the south polar vortex can be detected at the bottom. Image credit: NASA
Click on image to enlargePolar Vortex in Color
The recently formed south polar vortex stands out in the color-swaddled atmosphere of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, in this natural color view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. The south polar vortex can be seen approximately centered over the south pole in the lower left of the image. Image credit: NASA
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Spain is in pain. That seems to sum up the situation in a nutshell as one of Europe’s largest economies sputters. Every one in four Spaniards are out of work and 2012 has witnessed capital flight like never before. 276 billion dollars have been taken out of the country this year as the economic pillars of Spain’s economy gets shakier and shakier.
The southern California town of Brawley has taken the unusual step of declaring a state of emergency after a swarm of earthquakes rattled nearly 20 mobile homes off their blocks and forced a slaughterhouse to close, the mayor said on Wednesday. It is uncommon for quake-hardy California cities to declare emergencies due to tremors, but Brawley mayor George Nava said the earthquake swarm is a unique case because it has lasted for days and caused millions of dollars in damage. The cluster of relatively small quakes, which are caused by water and other fluids moving around in the Earth’s crust, began on Saturday evening and climaxed the next day with a 5.5 temblor, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The tremors were continuing on Wednesday and geologists say there have been hundreds in total.Nava said leaders in Brawley, a city of 25,000 residents south of the state’s inland Salton Sea and 170 miles (275 km) southeast of Los Angeles, declared a local emergency late on Tuesday. Officials with surrounding Imperial County made a similar declaration on Wednesday. Nineteen mobile homes were knocked off their blocks and their residents forced out, Nava said. The auditorium at Brawley Union High School has been damaged and closed off, and the National Beef slaughter plant in Brawley has been temporarily shut down due to damage, he said. Local businesses have suffered millions of dollars in losses from closures and from customers staying away, Nava said. But he could not give an exact account of quake-related losses. The Red Cross and local government agencies will offer services to residents on Friday and Saturday at a local center. The emergency declaration allows Brawley to receive more assistance from Imperial County, Nava said. At one point, about 10,000 residents in the city were without power, and the quakes have also caused water line disruptions, Nava said. “When you don’t have an AC or running water, it’s just not a good thing in this weather,” he said. Jeanne Hardebeck, research seismologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, said earlier this week that the cluster of quakes is not a sign that a larger temblor is imminent.
A series of small earthquakes which began Wednesday night and continued into Thursday near a long-dormant volcanic peak in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands has prompted researchers to raise the alert level for the Little Sitkin volcano.
The nearly 4,000-foot-high Little Sitkin volcano is named for the island where it resides, located in the Rat Islands in the Aleutian chain. The volcano has shown little activity since scientists have started observing it, with only three questionable eruptive events at the volcano since that time. The most recent eruption may have come in 1900, according to the Alaska Volcano Observatory.
Still, the AVO page for Little Sitkin mentions there may have been a “cataclysmic eruption” on the island sometime after the last ice age, which ended more than 11,000 years ago.
Seismic equipment located near the volcano began detecting a “swarm of high-frequency earthquakes” at about 7:15 p.m. Wednesday, the AVO reports. The earthquakes continued through the night into Thursday, prompting the alert level at the volcano being raised. The alert level is currently at yellow, which means that the “volcano is exhibiting signs of elevated unrest above known background level.” Additionally, aircraft traveling in the area are advised to exercise caution.
The volcano is located in a remote part of the Aleutians, about 35 miles northwest of the World War II outpost of Amchitka and 200 miles west of Adak.
Little Sitkin joins two other Alaska volcanoes, Iliamna and Cleveland, currently sitting at elevated alert levels.
Photos: Alaska volcanoes
Apr 02, 2012
Pavlof volcano and eruption plume on evening of Aug. 30, 2007. View is to the south. Plume height approximately 17-18,000 ft.
Iliamna, 130 miles from Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, was first elevated in March of this year following a continued increase in seismic activity.
“The current level of activity at Iliamna does not indicate an imminent or certain eruption,” a status update from the AVO said Thursday. “Seismic activity, along with gas emissions, appear to be declining gradually.”
Meanwhile, the oft-erupting Cleveland volcano which, like Sitkin, is located in the Aleutians, remains elevated as well. Cleveland has been upgraded a half-dozen times in since 2010 alone, and most recently erupted in June, when a pilot reported an ash cloud reaching up to 35,000 feet. Cleveland sits at a higher alert level than Iliamna or Little Sitkin, meaning the volcano still has a higher potential for eruption at any time.
Seismologists say a cluster of earthquakes has been detected at a remote volcano in Alaska’s western Aleutian Islands. The Alaska Volcano Observatory says the quakes began Wednesday evening at Little Sitkin Volcano and are continuing as of Thursday morning. No eruption has been detected. Scientist in charge John Power says there is no direct link to the swarm of earthquakes at Little Sitkin and a cluster of quakes that shook California’s Imperial County earlier this week. Powers says Little Sitkin is located on an uninhabited island and is far from any populated areas. He says the seismic activity is unusual for Little Sitkin, whose last eruption possibly in the early 1900s is questionable. Powers says the concern about an eruption would be the possible threat posed to aircraft.
South Korean rescuers Wednesday recovered two more bodies near two wrecked Chinese fishing boats, bringing the confirmed death toll from a powerful typhoon to 18.
Typhoon Bolaven — the strongest to hit the South for almost a decade — left a trail of death and damage in southwestern and south-central regions of the country.
It drove two Chinese fishing ships aground early Tuesday off the southern island of Jeju, sparking a dramatic rescue operation.
Coastguards wearing wetsuits struggled through high waves and pulled a total of 12 people to safety, and six swam ashore. Eight bodies had been recovered as of Wednesday and seven were still missing, the coastguard in Jeju said.
Dozens of divers are involved in the ongoing search. The coastguard said in a statement it would make “utmost efforts” to account for all the missing.
Most of the other deaths, confirmed by the public administration ministry, were caused by wind gusts that toppled walls or roofs or blew victims off their feet.
Typhoon alerts covering most of the country were lifted as ferries and flights returned to normal and schools reopened. But South Korea is now on watch for another typhoon, Tembin.
Bolaven moved on to North Korea, damaging crops and toppling some 3,700 roadside trees, the North’s official news agency said. Human casualties were not reported.
In North Hwanghae Province, the typhoon deactivated television relay facilities and destroyed or damaged some 20 houses and public buildings, the agency said, adding that “a lot of houses and roads” were submerged in other provinces.
Bolaven crossed the Yalu border river into China early Wednesday.
In South Korea, the typhoon was the strongest since 2003 in terms of wind speed. A maximum speed of 214 kilometres per hour (134 miles per hour) was recorded at Mount Mudeung in the southwestern city of Gwangju.
Power cuts of five minutes or longer hit nearly two million homes, a record in the country, the public administration ministry said.
The storm toppled nearly 8,000 trees and damaged 42 ships or boats and 35 houses. A total of 6,418 hectares (15,852 acres) of farmland was damaged.
Typhoon Tembin, located about 350 kilometres northeast of the Taiwanese capital Taipei early Wednesday, is approaching South Korea at a speed of 20 kilometres an hour.
The situation was bleak in some Eastbank Plaquemines Parish neighborhoods that were inundated by water as Hurricane Isaac pushed across the region.
Officials said an 18-mile stretch of levees was overtopped by water from the Mississippi River early Wednesday. The resulting flood brought as much as 10 feet of water to residential areas, early reports indicated.
The area includes a stretch from Braithwaite to White Ditch. Those communities were under a mandatory evacuation order because of safety concerns.
Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser told WDSU that the problem was limited to overtopping, and not a breach. He described the situation as “serious.”
The National Weather Service noted: “This will result in significant deep flooding in this area.”
The levee is not part of the federal Corps of Engineers protection system.
WDSU reporter Travers Mackel said flood gates were closed to contain the water. He said there was concern that some people were trapped in dangerous conditions.
In nearby St. Bernard Parish, trees blocked roadways, making driving nearly impossible.
More than 400,000 Entergy customers on the south shore were without power.
WDSU reporter Gina Swanson said water was encroaching on an evacuation shelter in Raceland, in Lafourche Parish.
Jefferson Parish reported flooding in Lower Lafitte and water levels in the bayou that were up two feet from Tuesday.
The Harvey and Belle Chasse tunnels were closed — a move that followed the shut-down of the Lake Pontchartrain Causevay Tuesday evening.
Several fires, including major ones in Gretna and Arabi, were also reported.
(MOBILE, Ala.) – While Louisiana appears to be taking the heaviest blow from Hurricane Isaac, there’s no doubt the storm is impact our stretch of the Gulf.
One viewer send in video of waves churning in Mobile Bay ripping up a dock, and a man in Pensacola uploaded video of driving wind and rain from his pool.
Thousands have been without power in Mobile County but crews have been out trying to make those repairs today.
Lake Tangipahoa, a 450 to 500-acre lake at Percy Quinn State Park just north of the Mississippi state line, was swollen from Isaac’s rain, undermining a dam that, if it failed, would release the body of water into the Tangipahoa River that meanders down the parish’s length to Lake Pontchartrain. “That’s going to inundate an already flooded river,” said National Guard Col. Rodney Painting, the incoming commander of the Guard’s 225th Engineer Brigade who started his day helping oversee the evacuation of flooded areas in LaPlace and would end it in his native Tangipahoa helping oversee what appears to be the largest such effort in the state since Isaac made landfall Tuesday. Authorities in Mississippi tried to ease the pressure by releasing some of the water, an effort said to be working. Louisiana officials are taking no chances.State and parish officials called a mandatory evacuation for communities from Kentwood to Robert. If the dam breaks, the National Guard will go into the affected communities with high-water vehicles and small boats, “that we can get through the flooded woods or streets if we have to,” said Painter, who during the Isaac state of emergency has helped coordinate evacuation sites at Zephyr Field in Metairie and in Slidell before moving to Laplace and Amite. In the “controlled release” using spillways, the water from the lake flooded out into a sparsely inhabited area of Mississippi on Thursday afternoon, relieving pressure on a dam scoured by Hurricane Isaac that threatened to push water levels in the Tangipahoa River up to 17 feet in Louisiana. Officials believe the controlled release of waters through emergency spillways will allow the water level to stabilize and lessen pressure on the dam until crews can breach the edge of Tangipahoa Lake near McComb and drain another 8 feet of water.While the release is expected to protect communities on the north shore, officials in Mississippi said about 20 homes on their side of the state line will be flooded out and emergency crews conducted a door-to-door effort to warn residents to leave their homes. Meanwhile, a more massive effort was occurring miles downriver, as National Guard units and other state assets attempted to get 40,000 to 60,000 people out of their homes. Though the water level in the lake was dropping and Mississippi officials downplayed the seriousness of the dam’s condition, Gov. Bobby Jindal continued to urge residents to leave potential flood zones in Tangipahoa Parish Thursday night. “The worse thing that could happen is that people get a false sense of confidence and then if there be a breach overnight it would be a lot harder for people to evacuate,” Jindal said. From the Florida Parishes Arena, troops drove school buses to collection points, where they’re driving evacuees to evacuation shelters set up at schools. School buses have been brought in from as far as Avoylles Parish and Terrebonne Parish, each driven by soldiers. “I’ve already got buses on the road full of people,” said Lt. Col. Vincent Tallo.
About 200 coaches and school buses are being rushed to Tangipahoa, said First Sgt. Rufus Jones of 3rd Battalion, 156th Infantry Regiment, a Guard combat unit whose soldiers, all armed with M4 rifles, waited in the arena for missions that would likely would include security details. By Thursday night, Tallo said he expected 300 National Guard troops in the parish, assisting the evacuation. The National Guard received the mission at 10 a.m., Thursday, said Maj. Scott Slaven, who commands the 205th Engineer Battalion in Bogalusa. Troops and equipment are staged on both sides of the Tangipahoa River, Slaven said. At Pontchatoula High School, Darryl Holliday of Kajun Kettle Foods Inc., which has a state contract to feed evacuees, was told to brace for 2,000 people. At 6:30 p.m., none of the evacuees had reached the school on Louisiana 22. Holliday said he was told that 40 people were en route. Painter said the plan calls for keeping evacuees in Tangipahoa Parish. At the Florida Parishes Arena, employees of the state Department of Children and Family Services prepared to account for the evacuees with forms, in part designed to identify families.
The damage to dam prompted Parish President Gordon Burgess to order mandatory evacuations along the Tangipahoa River, which were carried out with the assistance of the state and National Guard units. The first reports of problems with the dam came into emergency operations officials at 8 a.m., when crews noticed two “sloughs” where dirt was sliding down the sides of the earthen structure, said Greg Flynn, spokesman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. Those sloughs are the first sign of a problem with the integrity of a dam, Flynn said. The damage was caused by rain from Hurricane Isaac, which raised the water level of the recreational fishing lake by several feet, said Richard Coghlan, Emergency Coordinator for Pike County. “The dam appears very stable at this time,” Coghlan said. Mississippi officials stressed that reports Thursday that the waters had breached or overtopped the dam were incorrect. Opening the spillways will bring the water level back to normal but could cause flooding in a wide, sparsely populated stretch of Mississippi. Coghlan said residents had been warned and were planning on leaving for at least a night.
Those homes would also have been flooded in the event that the dam failed, he said. Once the water level drops back to normal, a process that could take days, crews will dig a trench out of the lake with the intention of causing a more serious drop in the water levels, Coghlan said. That will allow maintenance crews to go in and repair the dam, he said. Louisiana state officials estimated that between 40,000 and 60,000 homes would take on some water should the river flood. Many of those were outside the mandatory evacuation zone, which extended one mile on either side of the Tangipahoa River from Kentwood to Robert. It was unclear on Thursday exactly how many people lived in that area or how many were evacuated by the end of the day.
Officials rushed to evacuate more than 100 nursing home residents from Plaquemines Parish, an area with a reputation for weathering storms and perhaps the hardest hit by Isaac. In this hardscrabble, mostly rural parish, even the sick and elderly are hardened storm veterans. Other residents in the Riverbend Nursing and Rehabilitation Center were loaded into ambulances and taken to a nearby naval station. By midafternoon Wednesday, Isaac had been downgraded to a tropical storm. The Louisiana National Guard ceased rescue operations in Plaquemines Parish, saying it felt confident it had gotten everyone out. There were no serious injuries. National Guard spokesman Capt. Lance Cagnolatti said guardsmen would stay in the area over the coming days to help. By early Thursday, Isaac’s maximum sustained winds had decreased to 45 mph and the National Hurricane Center said it was expected to become a tropical depression by Thursday night, meaning its top sustained winds would drop below 39 mph. The storm’s center was on track to cross Arkansas on Friday and southern Missouri on Friday night, spreading rain as it goes.
Torrential rain left motorists battling flooded roads and residents using sandbags to stem the flow of flash floods. And yesterday’s downpour means the county is on track to record one of the wettest Augusts in recent years as families rue the summer that never was. The rain – which hit Staffordshire during yesterday morning and afternoon – forced local authorities and members of the emergency services to attempt to combat a number of deep floods. Weather experts said yesterday’s adverse conditions mean the region is on course to have endured a worse summer than the previous year. Figures from the Met Office have revealed the first two weeks of August saw 36mm of rain fall in the county. In July the region was hit with 139mm. Yesterday’s downpour caused problems across the city, along with Newcastle and the Staffordshire Moorlands. Staff from Staffordshire Moorlands District Council’s street cleaning team handed out sandbags to residents in Endon, Blythe Bridge, Stockton Brook and Brown Edge in a bid to tackle flooding. Firefighters were sent out to close off Endon’s Brook Lane after a flooded ford resulted in the area being deluged in 3ft high water. Crews from Leek and Endon also helped residents safely turn off their electricity and gas as water swept through the area. Last night motorists were being advised to avoid Brown Edge’s Breach Lane. A spokesman for Staffordshire Fire and Rescue said: “We’d urge people to monitor warnings given by the Environment Agency and to avoid driving in areas where there is localised flooding.”
Aug. 30 (Bloomberg) — Almost half of tuberculosis patients who received prior treatment were resistant to a second-line drug, suggesting the deadly disease may become “virtually untreatable,” according to a new study.
Among 1,278 patients who were resistant to two or more first-line tuberculosis drugs in Estonia, Latvia, Peru, Philippines, Russia, South Africa, South Korea and Thailand, 43.7 percent showed resistance to at least one second-line drug, according to a study led by Tracy Dalton at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings were published in the Lancet medical journal today.
About 1.4 million people died from TB, the second-deadliest infectious disease globally after AIDS, and 650,000 cases were multi-drug resistant in 2010, according to the World Health Organization. Rising infection rates prompted the U.K. to announce in May it will require pre-entry tuberculosis screening for migrants from 67 countries seeking to enter the country for more than 6 months.
“The global emergence of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis heralds the advent of widespread, virtually untreatable tuberculosis,” the study authors said in the published paper.
Previous treatment with second-line drugs was the strongest risk factor for resistance to these drugs, the authors said.
Alcohol Abuse
The prevalence of drug resistance, which ranged from 33 percent in Thailand to 62 percent in Latvia, also correlates with how long second-line drugs have been available in each country.
South Korea and Russia had the longest histories of availability — more than 20 years — and the highest rates of resistance. In contrast, Thailand, Philippines and Peru, where second-line drugs were introduced 10 years ago or less, had the lowest resistance rates.
Unemployment, alcohol abuse and smoking were also associated with resistance to second-line injectable treatment across countries.
This is one of the few studies that have followed patients with the multi-drug-resistant form of TB for several years, Justin Denholm, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, said in a phone interview.
Patients not taking their medicines properly is a major driver for resistance, said Denholm, who is studying TB transmission patterns in Australia’s Victoria state.
Individualized Treatment
The WHO’s current strategy for tackling TB is called Dots, short for “directly observed treatment, short course.” Under Dots, patients are required to show up at a clinic three times a week to be supervised when taking their medicine to be sure they complete the treatment.
“The reality is that this one-size-fits-all approach is a major part of what’s led to this drug resistance issue,” Denholm said. “I think individualized treatment is what we should be aiming for.”
Scientists are also researching new treatments. In a study published last month in the Lancet, researchers from Stellenbosch University in Cape Town said an experimental three- drug combination killed 99 percent of the bacteria within two weeks. As the combination doesn’t contain isoniazid or rifampicin, the two main medicines used against TB, it may also provide a much-needed weapon against drug-resistant strains, the researchers wrote.
China Survey
India and China, which have the world’s highest numbers of tuberculosis cases, weren’t included in Dalton’s study as they hadn’t begun pilot programs for increasing access to second-line drugs until after the study began.
In a 2007 national survey in China, 27 percent of multi- drug-resistant tuberculosis cases showed resistance to the antibiotic fluoroquinolone, according to the Lancet report. In India, a 2006 population-based survey in the western state of Gujarat reported fluoroquinolone resistance in 24 percent of cases.
The U.K. Border Agency this month began requiring TB screening for Indians applying for a settlement visa and will extend the rule to those obtaining a work visa from Sept. 10. The new requirement replaces screening at airports.
TB is at the highest level in 30 years in the U.K. In London, 84 percent of the 3,302 people infected in 2010 were foreign-born, according to the Health Protection Agency.
30.08.2012
Epidemic Hazard
USA
State of Colorado, [Cimarrona Campground, Archuleta County]
A camper near Pagosa Springs has contracted bubonic plague. The Durango Herald reports that the person contracted the plague during a family outing in the Cimarrona Campground. The San Juan Basin Health Department did not give the victim’s age or gender. Warning signs are being posted in the campground, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports an average of seven cases of plague each year across the country. Most human cases tend to occur in rural areas in the Southwest. Symptoms of plague begin two to six days after a person is bitten by an infected flea, rodent or cat. The plague can be successfully treated if diagnosed promptly.
A vast outcrop of the Arctic Siberian coast that had been frozen for tens of thousands of years is releasing huge carbon deposits as rising temperatures thaw parts of its coastline, a study warned Wednesday.
The carbon, a potential source of Earth-warming CO2, has lain frozen along the 7,000-kilometre (4,400-mile) northeast Siberian coastline since the last Ice Age.
But atmospheric warming and coastal erosion are gnawing at the icy seal, releasing about 40 million tonnes of carbon a year — 10 times more than previously thought, said a study in the journal Nature.
About two-thirds of the carbon escapes into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2) and the rest becomes trapped in higher layers of ocean sediment.
About half the carbon pool in soil globally is held in permafrost in the Arctic, a region that is experiencing twice the global average of climate warming, said the study led by researchers at Stockholm University.
Earlier this week, US scientists said the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean had melted to its smallest point ever.
The region covered by the Nature study, called Yedoma, is twice the size of Sweden but has been poorly researched because it is so remote.
The finding touches on a vicious circle, or positive feedback in climate parlance.
Under this, man-made warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels releases naturally-occurring stocks of CO2 that have been stored in permafrost since the last Ice Age, called the Pleistocene.
The released gases in turn add to global warming, which frees even more locked-up carbon, and so on.
“Thermal collapse and erosion of these carbon-rich Pleistocene coastline and seafloor deposits may accelerate the Arctic amplification of climate warming,” the paper warned.
The atmospheric leakage from Yedoma is equivalent to the annual emissions of around five million passenger cars, on the basis of average carbon output (five tonnes per year) of vehicles in the United States.
In a separate study also in Nature, researchers in Britain, the Netherlands and the United States used computer models to estimate there could be as much as four billion tonnes of methane under Antarctica’s icesheet.
Methane is 25 times more efficient at trapping solar heat than carbon dioxide.
Before it froze over, the region teemed with life whose organic remains became trapped in sediment later covered by ice sheets.
“Our modelling shows that over millions of years, microbes may have turned this old organic carbon into methane,” which could boost climate warming if released by icesheet collapse, the researchers said in a statement.
The collapse of the Antarctic icesheet is considered an extremely remote scenario by most climatologists, and some studies have suggested that parts of it could be thickening, due to localised increases in snowfall.
Out of the 36 patients, who underwent prophylactic treatment after identification of the anthrax hot bed in Zaporizhia region, currently two of them are remaining under supervision of physicians. “Today we can say that everything is fine with the people: out of 36 people, who received preventive treatment, only two are under the supervision of doctors now. They are a man and a woman from Voznesenka village, who had contacted the infected animal and were hospitalized immediately after the accident. Currently, they have no manifestations of disease, but to make sure that the health condition of these people is good, we should get the results of laboratory tests and withstand a certain period,” chief medical officer of Zaporizhia region Anatoly Sevalnev said. According to the deputy head of the Main Department for Veterinary Medicine in Zaporizhia region Serhit Dehtiarenko, the quarantine measures will continue until September 5.
Biohazard name:
Anthrax
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
Streaks of red tide – a toxic algal bloom that threatens both marine life – were clearly visible in Noyac Bay during a flyover on Thursday. Aerial photographer Jeff Cully captured images of red tide lining the shore at Long Beach. Red tide has appeared in Long Island waters every summer since 2004, Chris Gobler, Ph.D., told Patch earlier this month, when the algal bloom made its first showing of the year. Gobler, a Stony Brook Southampton School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences professor, said red tide typically appears in late August, but this summer it was detected in late July. The early arrival could be attributed to high temperatures this summer, he said. “This red tide is caused by the dinoflagellate, cochlodinium,” Gobler explained. “Cochlodinium is not a human health threat but is highly toxic to marine life. Fish exposed to dense cochlodinium blooms cannot survive more than one to six hours, depending on their size. We have had fish die at the Southampton marine lab when our intake system brought in red tide water.” After patches of red tide have passed through, pound net fisherman have found that catches have died off, he added. The School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, thanks to $3 million in grants, announced Monday a plan to restore the health of another local bay, Shinnecock, by seeding eelgrass and shellfish beds in strategic areas where they are most likely to thrive. Shellfish filter algae from water, but their populations in Long Island waters have declined in recent decades, a trend marine sciences hope to turn around. If the effort proves successful, it could be implemented in other distressed bodies of water, both locally and around the world. Research demonstrates that algal blooms are made worse by an increased flow of nitrogen into the bays, from sources such as cesspools and fertilizers, Gobler said.
Biohazard name:
Red Tide
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Status:
Today
Biological Hazard
Ireland
Multiple areas, [Beaches in Waterford and Cork, and Kerry]
Portuguese men-of-war, which look like jellyfish and whose sting can cause severe pain and, in rare cases, death in humans, has been seen on beaches in Waterford and Cork, and may yet reach Kerry coasts. The Irish Water Safety organisation yesterday warned swimmers, surfers and other beach users that Portuguese men-of- war have been seen in Tramore, Ardmore, Inchydoney and Schull, and that there is a risk they may drift farther north. The invertebrate and carnivore creature is a siphonophore, which means it is made up of a colony of organisms working together. Its float is about 30cm long and 13cm wide and it has tentacles that can reach 50m in length. The stinging venom-filled nematocysts in the tentacles cause severe pain to humans, leaving whip-like red welts on the skin. A sting may lead to an allergic reaction. There can also be serious effects, including fever, shock, and interference with heart and lung function. Stings may also cause death, although this is extremely rare.
Biohazard name:
Portuguese man O War Jellyfish invasion
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Once a resident of rivers throughout Japan, the Japanese river otter hasn’t been seen for more than 30 years. Today, the otter was officially deemed extinct by Japan’s Ministry of the Environment. The unique species of otter was designated as natural monument in Japan as the first Japanese mammal to have survived into the Showa Era (1926-1989) before succumbing to extinction. Two species of Japanese bat and two species of wolves became extinct in the Meija Era (1868-1912).
Over-hunting for its fur combined with habitat destruction from human development drove the river otter to near extinction by the 1930s. By the late ’70s the river otter was added to the “Red List of Threatened Mammals of Japan” as critically endangered. The last official sighting of a Japanese river otter was in 1979 along the banks of the Shinjo River in Susaki, Kochi Prefecture.
An adult river otter grew to about 110 centimeters (43 inches) in length, including a tail of up to 50 centimeters (20 inches), sporting a thick, lush coat of fur and short webbed feet. The typical diet for a Japanese river otter consisted mainly of fish, crab and shrimp, but they also dined on eels, sweet potatoes, watermelons and beetles.
Hope after extinction?
Official survey records from the Ministry of the Environment indicate the river otter disappeared from the northern island of Hokkaido in the 1950s and on the main island of Honshu in the 1960s. In the early 1990s research teams assembled in Kochi Prefecture, located in the southwestern part of the island of Shikoku, to see if they could find evidence of surviving otters. In March 1992 the researchers found hair and excrement that was determined to have come from an otter — perhaps the last official evidence of a surviving Japanese river otter.
But Yoshihiko Machida, professor emeritus at Kochi University, isn’t quite ready to sound the death knell for the Japanese river otter, citing reports of confirmed otter droppings found as late as 1999:
“I think it is possible that they still exist, and I want to continue my investigations,” he said in response to the declaration of the otter’s extinction.
Hope springs eternal.
30.08.2012
Environment Pollution
United Kingdom
Scotland, North Sea, [Between Tartan Alpha platform and Galley field]
An oil spill response spill vessel has been deployed to a North Sea field after oil started leaking from crack in a subsea pipeline. An estimated 13 barrels of oil have leaked from the pipeline which connects the Galley field to Talisman’s Tartan Alpha platform, 117 miles north-east of Aberdeen. The leak was first spotted last Friday. A spokesman for Talisman Energy said: “Talisman Energy (UK) Limited can confirm that following the identification of a crack in the production pipeline which connects the Galley field to the Tartan Alpha platform, flushing operations are being carried out using seawater to remove the production fluids from the pipeline. “This is being carried out in accordance with a plan developed by a specialist team and agreed with the Department of Energy and Climate Change, bringing the situation to a safe and timely resolution. All relevant authorities have been informed and are being kept updated.” He added: “Based on the investigatory and monitoring activity undertaken since we identified the issue on 24 August, we estimate the maximum total release to date is 88 barrels of fluids, of which approximately 13 would be oil and the rest water. “We take our responsibility to safeguard the environment very seriously and, as a precaution we deployed a spill recovery and containment vessel with oil spill response equipment on board, while monitoring the leak area by ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) on a round-the-clock basis. The oil spill response vessel will remain on station during subsequent remedial works. “In addition, we have established a regular programme of spotter plane flights to monitor the sea surface and placed a trained wildlife observer on a vessel at the site to monitor seabirds and marine life.”
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
One of the poorest nations on earth, Bangladesh is also one of the world`s top clothes producers. But in meeting foreign commercial demands factory workers suffer extreme poverty and notoriously harsh working conditions. RT`s Priya Sridhar investigates why no one is being held to account.
White Island crater, 5 August 2012 – Source: GeoNet
View of White Island from Papamoa Beach – Source: Supplied by Rebecca Cowley
A steam plume has been visible at the White Island crater today.
Earlier this week GNS Science issued a volcanic alert for White Island, which is off the coast of the Bay of Plenty, due to signs of increased activity.
According to GNS, although more volcanic activity has been recorded, “everything seems to be relatively stable”.
Volcanologists have recorded a rapid rise in White Island’s crater lake, a pulse of volcanic tremor and slightly higher gas levels in the plume.
“Although the volcanic tremor increased substantially during Saturday it has returned to levels similar to those during the early part of last week,” GNS said.
The white steam plume can sometimes be seen from areas of the Bay of Plenty coast.
On Thursday, GNS Science duty volcanologist Michael Rosenberg said its crater lake has started to re-fill and gases were now “vigorously streaming through it”.
“Airborne gas measurements show that the discharge of some sulphur gases has increased,” he said.
GNS volcanologists plan to visit White Island early next week to collect water and gas samples and make a ground level survey of the crater floor.
These measurements will help understand what changes are taking place beneath the volcano and whether these might lead to increased surface activity.
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GNS advises people to take extra caution, especially if approaching the crater lake and other active thermal features.
In this Sept. 30, 2011, file photo, sailboats and a floating dock lie on the dry, cracked dirt in a harbor at Lake Hefner in Oklahoma City as drought continues to be a problem across the state. The relentless type of heat that has blistered the U.S. and other parts of the world in recent years is due to man-made global warming, a new study from a top government scientist says.
By The Associated Press and NBC News staff
The relentless, weather-gone-crazy type of heat that has blistered the United States and other parts of the world in recent years is so rare that it can’t be anything but man-made global warming, says a new statistical analysis from a top government scientist.
The research by a man often called the “godfather of global warming” says that the likelihood of such temperatures occurring from the 1950s through the 1980s was rarer than 1 in 300. Now, the odds are closer to 1 in 10, according to the study by NASA scientist James Hansen. He says that statistically what’s happening is not random or normal, but pure and simple climate change.
“This is not some scientific theory. We are now experiencing scientific fact,” Hansen told The Associated Press in an interview.
Hansen is a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and a professor at Columbia University. He has called for government action to curb greenhouse gases for years. While his study was published online Saturday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, it is unlikely to sway opinion among the remaining climate change skeptics.
However, several climate scientists praised the new work.
In a departure from most climate research, Hansen’s study — based on statistics, not the more typical climate modeling — blames these three heat waves purely on global warming:
—Last year’s devastating Texas-Oklahoma drought.
—The 2010 heat waves in Russia and the Middle East, which led to thousands of deaths.
—The 2003 European heat wave blamed for tens of thousands of deaths, especially among the elderly in France.
The analysis was written before the current drought and record-breaking temperatures that have seared much of the United States this year. But Hansen believes this too is another prime example of global warming at its worst.
In an opinion column published Saturday in The Washington Post, Hansen said his predictions in the late 1980s of the dire consequences of steadily increasing temperatures have proven to be worse than he thought.
“Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.
The deadly European heat wave of 2003, the fiery Russian heat wave of 2010 and catastrophic droughts in Texas and Oklahoma last year can each be attributed to climate change. And once the data are gathered in a few weeks’ time, it’s likely that the same will be true for the extremely hot summer the United States is suffering through right now.
These weather events are not simply an example of what climate change could bring. They are caused by climate change. The odds that natural variability created these extremes are minuscule, vanishingly small. To count on those odds would be like quitting your job and playing the lottery every morning to pay the bills.”
The new research makes the case for the severity of global warming in a different way than most scientific studies and uses simple math instead of relying on complex climate models or an understanding of atmospheric physics. It also doesn’t bother with the usual caveats about individual weather events having numerous causes.
The increase in the chance of extreme heat, drought and heavy downpours in certain regions is so huge that scientists should stop hemming and hawing, Hansen said. “This is happening often enough, over a big enough area that people can see it happening,” he said.
Scientists have generally responded that it’s impossible to say whether single events are caused by global warming, because of the influence of natural weather variability.
However, that position has been shifting in recent months, as other studies too have concluded climate change is happening right before our eyes.
Hansen hopes his new study will shift people’s thinking about climate change and goad governments into action. He wrote an op-ed piece that appeared online Friday in the Washington Post.
“There is still time to act and avoid a worsening climate, but we are wasting precious time,” he wrote.
The science in Hansen’s study is excellent “and reframes the question,” said Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia who was a member of the Nobel Prize-winning international panel of climate scientists that issued a series of reports on global warming.
“Rather than say, ‘Is this because of climate change?’ That’s the wrong question. What you can say is, ‘How likely is this to have occurred with the absence of global warming?’ It’s so extraordinarily unlikely that it has to be due to global warming,” Weaver said.
For years scientists have run complex computer models using combinations of various factors to see how likely a weather event would happen without global warming and with it. About 25 different aspects of climate change have been formally attributed to man-made greenhouse gases in dozens of formal studies. But these are generally broad and non-specific, such as more heat waves in some regions and heavy rainfall in others.
Another upcoming study by Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, links the 2010 Russian heat wave to global warming by looking at the underlying weather that caused the heat wave. He called Hansen’s paper an important one that helps communicate the problem.
But there is bound to be continued disagreement. Previous studies had been unable to link the two, and one by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that the Russian drought, which also led to devastating wildfires, was not related to global warming.
White House science adviser John Holdren praised the paper’s findings in a statement. But he also said it is true that scientists can’t blame single events on global warming: “This work, which finds that extremely hot summers are over 10 times more common than they used to be, reinforces many other lines of evidence showing that climate change is occurring and that it is harmful.”
Skeptical scientist John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville said Hansen shouldn’t have compared recent years to the 1950s-1980s time period because he said that was a quiet time for extremes.
But Derek Arndt, director of climate monitoring for the federal government’s National Climatic Data Center, said that range is a fair one and often used because it is the “golden era” for good statistics.
Granger Morgan, head of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, called Hansen’s study “an important next step in what I expect will be a growing set of statistically-based arguments.”
In a landmark 1988 study, Hansen predicted that if greenhouse gas emissions continue, which they have, Washington, D.C., would have about nine days each year of 95 degrees or warmer in the decade of the 2010s. So far this year, with about four more weeks of summer, the city has had 23 days with 95 degrees or hotter temperatures.
Hansen says now he underestimated how bad things would get.
And while he hopes this will spur action including a tax on the burning of fossil fuels, which emit carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas, others doubt it.
Science policy expert Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado said Hansen clearly doesn’t understand social science, thinking a study like his could spur action. Just because people understand a fact that doesn’t mean people will act on it, he said.
In an email, he wrote: “Hansen is pursuing a deeply flawed model of policy change, one that will prove ineffectual and with its most lasting consequence a further politicization of climate science (if that is possible!).”
Tens of thousands evacuated as high winds threaten music Lollapalooza fest
Many of the fans were told to go to one of three underground parking garages designated as ‘emergency evacuation shelters’
Daniel Boczarski / Getty Images Contributor
Fans evacuate Lollapalooza music festival after a severe storm warning on Saturday in Chicago.
NBC News and news services
The Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago was suspended and tens of thousands of fans were evacuated to shelters on Saturday as the city braced for dangerous storms with high winds, organizers said.
Organizers stopped at about 3:30 p.m. (2:30 p.m. ET), and many of the fans were told to go to one of three underground parking garages designated as “emergency evacuation shelters,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
“Our first priority is always the safety of our fans, staff and artists,” said Shelby Meade, communications director for C3 Presents, the promoter behind Lollapalooza. “We regret having to suspend any show but safety always comes first.”
The National Weather Service office in Romeoville, Illinois, which covers Chicago, recorded wind gusts up to 55 miles per hour on Saturday and had reports of gusts up to 70 mph, some measured, some estimated, said meteorologist Ben Deubelbeiss.
“Heavy rains, wind and lightning are the main threats from these storms,” he said.
The worst of the severe weather powered through Chicago late Saturday afternoon and headed over Lake Michigan and northern Indiana.
The unsettled weather was set to continue in the Midwest and beyond throughout the weekend and into Monday, Weather.com reported. A cold front was set to march across the eastern states on Sunday and Monday, the website said.
This cold weather mingled with a warm, humid air mass will help trigger severe thunderstorms from the eastern Great Lakes and Northeast into the Mid-South, weather.com said.
Downpours were expected ahead of the front and flash flooding was possible, it added.
Festival-goers evacuated Festival-goers were evacuated from Grant Park in downtown Chicago and directed by police and staffers to three shelter sites along Michigan Avenue in underground garages.
The festival draws nearly 200,000 people to the park each year, and this year is headlined by music acts including the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Black Sabbath and Jack White.
A year ago, seven people died and 40 were injured when a huge temporary stage at the Indiana State Fair came crashing down amid high winds just before the country duo Sugarland was to begin performing.
Poor communication about predictions of stormy weather approaching the area ahead of the Sugarland concert was among the factors cited in the stage collapse by consultant studies commissioned by the state.
This year, organizers thanked city officials and fans for their reaction to the inclement weather.
“We want to thank the tens of thousands of festival goers, staff, and artists who calmly and safely exited from Grant Park today,” Charlie Jones, partner of C3 Presents, which promotes the festival. “We also applaud and thank the City of Chicago for their cooperation and commitment to making Lolla a safe and enjoyable experience for all. Once again Chicago has come through and we’re proud to call the city our partner.”
Lollapalooza, initially organized in 1991 by Jane’s Addiction singer Perry Farrell, began as a traveling music festival with several dates all summer. After a six-year hiatus starting in the late 90s, the popular alternative music festival began holding its annual concerts only in Chicago in 2005.
About 30 homes in Layton were evacuated late Saturday after a brush fire broke out in the foothills. The residents in the Layton Ridge subdivision and along Hanney Canyon were ordered to evacuate as a precaution. Dubbed the Ridges Fire, firefighters were worried that if the winds shifted, the flames could threaten several homes in the area. Fire crews were prepared to spend the night defending those homes if necessary. “We have a hillside fire that’s actually involving a lot of federal and stand land property right now,” said Layton fire spokesman Doug Bitton. “We do have some concerns that we have downslope winds that have been projected.” The fire began about 6 p.m. east of Highway 89, burning brush and steep terrain. It had burned about 10 acres as of 11 p.m. How the blaze began, however, was unknown. The steep terrain made it difficult for firefighters to reach the area and fight it from the ground. Air attacks were stopped for the night, which contributed to the concerns. “This will be an overnight fire and will probably extend for many days to search for and seek containment,” Bitton said. Residents and drivers along Highway 89 flooded dispatchers with 911 calls. Smoke could be seen for miles. No homes were initially threatened, but dozens of families came to see where the smoke was coming from. “I drove home, got the wife and kids and came over to take a look. It’s probably tripled in size since I saw it first,” Layton resident Michael Ellgren said of the wildfire. “I see a helicopter going and trying to pour water onto the fire, which is spreading really fast,” said Scarlett Kluge, who also lives in Layton. More than 30 firefighters were battling the fire, which quickly became a danger to a nearby neighborhood. The Red Cross set up an evacuation shelter at Northridge High School, 2430 N. Hill Field Road. Fire officials also sent a Tweet warning commuters along Highway 89 to slow down because of the large amount of smoke in the area.
Firefighters are struggling to control more than a dozen blazes that have scorched thousands of acres. NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez reports.
By NBC News staff and wire services
Updated at 12:20 a.m ET: At least 121 structures, many of them homes, have been destroyed by wildfires in Oklahoma, officials said Saturday as temperatures topped 100 degrees for a 19th straight day.
New evacuations were under way Saturday as well: Authorities ordered evacuations in the towns of Glencoe, population of around 600, and Mannford, population about 3,000 in Creek County about 20 miles west of Tulsa.
Thousands were on the move as the fire in Creek County spread quickly, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol reported.
A grass fire near Luther consumed 56 structures and hot spots there and at two other large fires kept crews busy Saturday. It has burned 2,600 acres by Saturday evening.
Gov. Mary Fallin toured the Luther area on Saturday, calling the devastation “heartbreaking.”
“A lot of people were at work and didn’t realize how quickly the fire was moving,” Fallin told Reuters in a telephone interview. “It’s emotional. For the children, it’s very emotional to lose their possessions.”
Authorities suspect that fire might be arson: The Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Department said it received a 911 call from a man who reported seeing another man toss a lighted newspaper from a pickup truck window on Friday afternoon.
Residents returning to their homes Saturday found charred timbers poking from the debris and the burned out shells of refrigerators, washers and dryers.
“It’s all gone. All of our family pictures, everything was there,” said Victoria Landavazo, clutching a young child in her arms.
Tracy Streeper was working in Oklahoma City, about 40 miles southwest, when she learned the fire was approaching. Caught in traffic, it took her a long time to reach home and then, “once we got here, we had maybe 30 minutes.”
A wildfire has consumed over 2,000 acres in Cleveland County, Oklahoma, burning buildings and forcing evacuations. NBCNews.com’s Al Stirrett reports.
She grabbed a few clothes, medicine and her three dogs and left quickly.
Reuters
Remains of a home burnned to the ground are seen in Luther, Okla., on Saturday.
“Your adrenaline is running. You’re pumped up,” Streeper said. “You could just see a wall of flames coming this way. Everything was on fire.”
Casey Strahan said he went outside after power went out in the home he rents about 4:30 p.m. He looked south and saw smoke rising in the distance. He thought it was moving away from him until police ordered him to leave. He rushed through the house, grabbing clothing, photos and a computer as he went. When he returned Saturday, he found the house burned to the ground.
“I just never thought it was really going to get us,” said Strahan, a softball and girls basketball coach at Luther High School.
Fires near Mannford and Noble claimed another 65 structures.
Two new fires broke out on Saturday, and Oklahoma now is fighting 13 across the state, said Forestry Services spokeswoman Michelle Finch-Walker.
Oklahoma has contacted neighboring states for help but, with the exception of Texas, neighbors have had to focus on their own fire threats, Fallin said on Friday.
“There’s fires in Arkansas. There’s fires in Kansas and Texas. Everybody else is on high heat alert,” she said.
Sarah Phipps / AP
A home burns during a large wildfire Friday, Aug. 3, 2012 in Luther, Okla.
Oklahoma joins several states that have been plagued by wildfires this summer, including Colorado, Arkansas and Nebraska. Fires are being fed by a widespread drought. Nearly two-thirds of the contiguous United States was under some level of drought as of July 31.
Low humidity, strong southerly winds and drought conditions enabled the wildfires to spread quickly across treetops, said Michelann Ooten, deputy director of the state’s Office of Emergency Management.
“It’s just a very difficult situation we’re facing that’s all weather related,” Ooten said.
The heat in Oklahoma City, the state capital, has reached historic levels.
On Friday, Oklahoma City tied its all-time record for the highest temperature ever recorded when the thermometer reached 113 Fahrenheit, a mark last recorded in the Dust Bowl days in 1936.
It’s so hot that some volunteer fire departments have made a public plea for Gatorade donations to keep their crews hydrated in the scalding conditions.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Hundreds of people residing near Beas river have been evacuated to safe places after flash flood caused by torrential rain over Dhundi peaks at south portal of Rohtang tunnel flooded the Seri rivulet, a tributary to Beas river, on Friday at 8pm. People living close to river between Palchan and Kullu are being evacuated and traffic on national highway has been stopped. Till last report received from Palchan (near Dhundi) at 10.30pm, level of the river was rising continuously and police were evacuating the people from Bahang village, 6km from Manali. According to police, there is no report of any casualty. Sandeep Kumar, a resident of Bahang village, said people are trying to save the household accessories amid chaotic atmosphere and conditions have become even worse after power failure. “Everything was normal till late evening but the situation changed suddenly after 8pm when river water, mixed with sludge, started engulfing its banks. People are risking their lives to remove the household stuffs,” he said. An engineer working with a hydel project near Palchan said over phone that roaring sound of river is shaking the foundation of the houses. “Nobody is going to sleep tonight. Villagers have gathered at many places and are guarding the river banks with floodlights,” he said. According to villagers it is a cloudburst which might have caused devastation at its source on mountains. Kullu deputy commissioner Amitabh Awasthi said , police are patrolling the river banks and have directed people to move to safe places. “We have closed the traffic on national highway. We shall keep an eye on the situation throughout the night,” he said.
Today
Flash Flood
United Kingdom
England and Wales, [Western, Southwestern and Northern region]
Heavy rain over the weekend caused a landslip, and left homes knee-deep in floodwater. Firefighters worked with rescue teams to ensure no one was trapped after serious landslide in Portbury, near Bristol, brought soil, rocks and debris down on to a country lane. In North Somerset, Devon, North Cornwall and North Yorkshire fire brigade teams were called out to pump water from homes and to rescue people from cars trapped on inundated roads. Flash flooding closed the A69 Newcastle to Carlisle Road in Northumberland for a time. Six people were evacuated from properties in Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders, roads were closed due to flash flooding and the town centre had to be pumped out. In Wales, the Environment Agency put a flood warning in place on the River Hydfron at Llanddowror, Carmarthenshire, and an alert on rivers on the eastern Cleddau, Pembrokeshire. The Met Office issued amber “be prepared” warnings of slow-moving heavy showers through the day for the East Midlands, North-east England, North-west England, South-west Scotland, Lothian borders, South-west England, Strathclyde, Wales, the West Midlands and Yorkshire and Humber.
Overnight heavy rain has flooded scores of homes in the Scottish borders and the south-west of England. A flash flood ripped through the Scottish border town of Jedburgh on Saturday night. Around 30 homes had to be evacuated after they were submerged in 3ft of silted water when the river broke its banks. Displaced families are being put up in the local community hall. Flash flooding also hit towns in north Somerset, where the emergency services received around 80 calls for help. Firefighters spent the night pumping out homes in an operation that lasted for more than six hours. Crews also worked with specialist rescue teams at a landslip in Portbury, near Bristol, after the rain and run-off from surrounding fields brought down mud, rocks and trees. Fire brigades said no one had been trapped under the slip. A search and rescue 4×4 vehicle was used to clear debris to make the lane passable, with help from a local farmer and his tractor, and one family was helped to safety. An Avon Fire and Rescue spokesman said: “One family that were trapped in their property by the slides were able to get access to and from the lane. “Very fortunately, after extensive searching the area was declared clear.”David Westrup, 61, who runs the Elm Tree Cottage bed and breakfast in Nailsea, about eight miles from Bristol, said that his neighbours had been hit by the floods. “We’re on a hill above the river, so we’re absolutely fine … but there’s a cottage right on the roadside that was flooded out last night.” “I saw fire engines there that were pumping and there were houses that were in our view that were being pumped out by the fire brigade.” He said the home on the opposite side of the river which flows through Nailsea had been flooded a few times in recent years. “There were sandbags all over their drive and you could see water all over their driveway. But whether it got up to their front door I don’t know.” Westrup said the Environment Agency had shored up the river bank in the area in 2011, but it didn’t seem to make much difference. He added: “I can’t imagine the [extra defences] would have broken because they put extra shuttering which wasn’t there before. In other words, the agency had properly shored it up and raised the level of the bank, but it looks like it [the water] may have come over the top of it again.” Heavy showers have been forecast across much of the UK for the rest of Sunday, but Olympic events in London may escape the worst despite heavy downpours hitting the start of the women’s marathon race .
A team of medical experts from Dar es Salaam was yesterday dispatched to Kagera region to further examine the two patients believed to be suffering from the Ebola hemorrhagic fever. But as the team of medical experts was sent to Kagera region, the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare subsequently confirmed the outbreak of the deadly fever in the western part of the country. Confirming the reports, the Deputy Minister for Health and Social Welfare, Dr Seif Seleman Rashid, also said that a team of medical experts was still diagnosing a patient in efforts to establish the symptoms. In the meantime, reports from Nyakahanga designated hospital in Karagwe district, Kagera region indicate that there were two patients including a child, suspected to be suffering from the deadly fever that has rocked neighbouring Uganda. According to one of the doctors who diagnosed the patient at Karagwe’s Nyakahanga hospital, preliminary findings show that the victim might have contacted the Ebola virus. However, the doctor who requested anonymity told the Guardian on Sunday that ‘further medical examination’ would be conducted to gather more evidence about the possible outbreak of Ebola, adding that the patient had since been quarantined pending final results. According to the doctor, the ‘Ebola patient’ was brought to the hospital on Friday morning and, upon diagnosis, it was established that the patient had suffered from Ebola. The patient who is a six-year-old child was brought to the Mulongo hospital by his mother from a village close to the Uganda-Tanzania boarder after the child developed severe symptoms.“We are doing further medical examination on a patient … we will tell the general public once it is confirmed that we are dealing with Ebola virus infections,” the doctor said, adding that currently the patient alleged to have been infected was admitted in a separate room and now lives in isolation from other patients at the hospital. He said preliminary check-ups found out that the diagnosis had all signs showed clear symptoms of Ebola – after which he ordered the patient to be admitted for closer monitoring locally, and further medical examination by medical experts from the ministry headquarters. He added that the patient had since been placed in a special intensive care room which is out of bounds for all other people — apart from his mother who is taking care of the patient. However, he said, this was a medical rule aimed at avoiding quick spread of the deadly disease Another patient also believed to have crossed the boarder from Uganda was admitted at the hospital as well, but medical investigations of his deteriorating health conditions were still not completed by Saturday evening. As a precaution, the doctor said his hospital team and the district health workers had since started warning people in surrounding villages to take immediate measures whenever they come across such patients. He has also warned the people living closer to the border with Uganda to be careful not to come into contact with any person whom they see vomiting or bleeding – clear signs of someone suffering from Ebola.
On Wednesday this week, Dr. Mwinyi told visibly alarmed legislators in Dodoma that a team of medical experts had been dispatched to the border with Uganda, fully equipped with protective gear and medical supplies. The minister advised the general public especially those living in the northern regions of Kagera, Mara, Mwanza and Kigoma — some of which share the border crossings with Uganda — to take precautions because the disease was highly contagious. Earlier, the World Health Organization (WHO) had alerted Tanzania on the Ebola threat, prompting the ministry to issue a press statement elaborating that Ebola (Ebola HF) was a severe, often-fatal disease in humans and nonhuman primates (monkeys, gorillas, and chimpanzees) that has appeared sporadically since its initial recognition in 1976. The disease is caused by infection with Ebola virus, named after a river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), where it was first recognized. The virus is one of two members of a family of RNA viruses called the Filoviridae; there are five identified subtypes of the Ebola virus — four of which have been known to cause disease in humans: Ebola-Zaire, Ebola-Sudan, Ebola-Ivory Coast and Ebola-Bundibugyo. The fifth, Ebola-Reston, has caused disease in nonhuman primates, but not in humans.
Biohazard name:
Ebola (susp.)
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
At least 10 people admitted to the Sukraraj Tropical and Disease Control Hospital in Nepali capital Kathmandu have tested positive for cholera. The hospital laboratory said Vibrio Cholera belonging to 01 Ogawa stereotype was detected in all the patients. Doctors at hospital attributed the spread of cholera and diarrhea infection in Kathmandu to contaminated water, according to Saturday’s Republica daily. “Most of the patients who came to the hospital said that they had drunk water supplied by Kathmandu Upatyaka Kahanepani Limited without boiling or treatment,” Tulsha Adhikari, a nursing staff said. She said whole families had been infected and some were brought to the hospital by their neighbors as all family members were sick.
Biohazard name:
Cholera
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
Health workers in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo say an outbreak of cholera has claimed at least nine lives in a refugee camp. The first case of cholera – a contagious disease caused by filth and lack of hygiene – emerged three days ago among thousands of people in a makeshift refugee camp, Doctors Without Borders said. Thousands of people have fled fighting between M23 rebels and government forces backed by UN peacekeepers. Patrick Wieland, from Doctors Without Borders, said his organisation had set up an isolation clinic tent at Kanyaruchinya on the outskirts of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province. Wieland said humanitarian agencies were delivering water to the camp but people probably were collecting the water with dirty containers. He said there were not enough toilets for the people who fled fighting last week in Rutshuru and neighbouring Kiwanja, about 80km north of Goma. “We’re treating people with arms and legs blown-off by grenades and other heavy arms,” said Wieland. He also said that for the first time they treated many more civilians than combatants. In Goma, locals had told that 13,500 families had arrived in the past month, displaced by the fighting. “People have been forced to build their own makeshift shelters – shelters made of twigs, grass and so on and a few leaves,” he said.”Few people have been able to get hold of plastic sheeting from the United Nations refugee agency, but for the most part people are being forced to live out in the open. “They’re saying they have had no food for a month and have [had only] high-energy biscuits a week ago, but since then nothing.” M23 rebels, who take their name from a March 23 2009 agreement they signed with the Congolese government, last week attacked government troops and UN peacekeepers, firing mortars at the peacekeepers’ base at Kiwanja which was surrounded by more than 2,000 displaced people at the time. Wieland said the fighting was much heavier than any his team has seen in the three-month-old rebellion. He said that since April, Doctors Without Borders has treated more than 500 people hurt in the conflict. Congo’s army now controls only the city of Goma and the village of Kibumba, 10km outside Goma. Now the rebels hold all towns going north as far as Rutshuru and are threatening to besiege Goma. The UN Security Council demanded on Thursday that the M23 halt any advances towards Goma. In a statement delivered by council president Gerard Araud of France, the Security Council expressed deep concern at the worsening humanitarian situation, especially a surge in the number of refugees. Araud called on the international community to provide appropriate humanitarian support.
Biohazard name:
Cholera Outbreak
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
A 30-year-old tourist from Germany presented in the Mid West Regional Hospital earlier this year with renal failure and respiratory symptoms. He was managed with supportive therapy and made a good recovery. He was discharged and returned to Germany. Subsequently, he was found to be IgM positive for [a] hantavirus [infection] and this diagnosis was confirmed by Porton Down in early June [2012]. A human hantavirus infection has not previously been diagnosed in Ireland. However, there were an exceptional number of cases reported in Germany and in other countries in Europe during the winter of 2011 and spring of 2012. Given the amount of travel between the continent and Ireland, it is not surprising that we would eventually see a case of this infection here. This is the 1st ever case confirmation that has been reported in this country [Ireland] and, as an unusual event, it merits further consideration.
Biohazard name:
Hantavirus
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
For more than two months, officials from federal to local have been unable to pin down the source of a natural gas leak and tremors in assumption parish.
But on Thursday a 200 by 200 foot “slurry area” has appeared in bayou corne in northern assumption parish…
The formation of the slurry area was accompanied by a diesel-like odor that some residents said burned their eyes and noses but dissipated by midmorning Friday…
Assumption parish officials declared an emergency and called for an evacuation of residents living near the nearly 1-acre muddy site.
A potential failure of a cavern operated by Texas brine company may have caused the slurry area, or sinkhole, which swallowed full-grown trees and denuded a formerly forested patch of cypress swamp.
Final determination of a positive link between the failure of the cavern and either the natural gas bubbling or the slurry area has not been made.
In response, gov. bobby jindal declared an emergency Friday.
Broomfield Public Health and Environment advises people to steer clear of wild rodents, squirrels and rabbits near the Plaster Reservoir after confirming cases of tularemia. The disease was found Thursday in specimens of wild rabbits collected south and west of the reservoir located northeast of W. 136th Avenue and Lowell Boulevard. Broomfield residents had noticed several dead rabbits in the vicinity. Broomfield Public Health and Environment said in a health alert released Friday that there have not been any confirmed cases or noticeable outbreaks in other areas. People can contract tularemia from tick and deer fly bites or skin contact with infected animals. Symptoms include sudden fever, chills, headache, diarrhea, muscle aches, joint pain and dry cough. People can also develop pneumonia. Health officials said the threat to human health is minimal, so trails will remain opened and the area will be monitored over the next few weeks.
Biohazard name:
Tularemia (rabbit)
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
A Surfer on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion has been seriously injured in a shark attack, the second in two weeks, as local authorities called for swift preventative action. Xavier Brunetiere, general secretary at the Reunion town hall, said the surfer’s right foot and his hand were seriously injured, in the attack at Saint Leu, located in a marine reserve on the western side of the island. The man, whose identity was not released, is aged about 40 and is an experienced surfer, Mr Brunetiere said. Witnesses said the shark had severed a hand and a foot from the victim, but he made it back to the beach by himself. His life was not in danger, Mr Brunetiere said. Shark attacks here have been increasing in the last two years, with three surfers killed in the last 13 months. Sunday’s attack, the third this year, comes just over a fortnight after 22-year-old local Alexandre Rassica was killed by a shark who bit off his leg. A number of worried local mayors want to allow fishermen to catch sharks in the marine reserve. Last week, the mayor of Saint Leu, Thierry Robert, authorised fishing for sharks in the waters around Saint Leu — which contain part of the marine reserve. He later withdrew the decision after French Overseas minister Victorin Lurel said France would deal with the problem.
Biohazard name:
Shark attack (Non-Fatal)
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
by GRANT SCHULTE (AP) — Thousands of fish are dying in the central U.S. as the hot, dry summer dries up rivers and causes water temperatures to climb in some spots to nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius). Ads by Google Heating Contractor – Repair-Replacement-Maintenance Mention Ad 10% off Repair/ Install – http://www.g-smechanical.com/ About 40,000 shovelnose sturgeon were killed in Iowa last week as water temperatures reached 97 degrees Fahrenheit (36.1 Celsius). Nebraska fishery officials said they’ve seen thousands of dead sturgeon, catfish, carp, and other species in the Lower Platte River, including the endangered pallid sturgeon. And biologists in Illinois said the hot weather has killed tens of thousands of large- and smallmouth bass and channel catfish and is threatening the population of the greater redhorse fish, a state-endangered species. So many fish died in one Illinois lake that the carcasses clogged an intake screen near a power plant, lowering water levels to the point that the station had to shut down one of its generators. “It’s something I’ve never seen in my career, and I’ve been here for more than 17 years,” said Mark Flammang, a fisheries biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. “I think what we’re mainly dealing with here are the extremely low flows and this unparalleled heat.” The fish are victims of one of the driest and warmest summers in history. The federal U.S. Drought Monitor shows nearly two-thirds of the lower 48 states are experiencing some form of drought, and the Department of Agriculture has declared more than half of the nation’s counties — nearly 1,600 in 32 states — as natural disaster areas. More than 3,000 heat records were broken over the last month. Iowa DNR officials said the sturgeon found dead in the Des Moines River were worth nearly $10 million, a high value based in part on their highly sought eggs, which are used for caviar. The fish are valued at more than $110 a pound. Gavin Gibbons, a spokesman for the National Fisheries Institute, said the sturgeon kills don’t appear to have reduced the supply enough to hurt regional caviar suppliers. Flammang said weekend rain improved some of Iowa’s rivers and lakes, but temperatures were rising again and straining a sturgeon population that develops health problems when water temperatures climb into the 80s. “Those fish have been in these rivers for thousands of thousands of years, and they’re accustomed to all sorts of weather conditions,” he said. “But sometimes, you have conditions occur that are outside their realm of tolerance.” Ads by Google Fish & Wildlife Mgmt. – Online Environmental Science Degree at AMU. Flexible Courses. Enroll. – http://www.AMUOnline.com/Environment In Illinois, heat and lack of rain has dried up a large swath of Aux Sable Creek, the state’s largest habitat for the endangered greater redhorse, a large bottom-feeding fish, said Dan Stephenson, a biologist with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. “We’re talking hundreds of thousands (killed), maybe millions by now,” Stephenson said. “If you’re only talking about game fish, it’s probably in the thousands. But for all fish, it’s probably in the millions if you look statewide.” Stephenson said fish kills happen most summers in small private ponds and streams, but the hot weather this year has made the situation much worse. “This year has been really, really bad — disproportionately bad, compared to our other years,” he said. Stephenson said a large number of dead fish were sucked into an intake screen near Powerton Lake in central Illinois, lowering water levels and forcing a temporary shutdown at a nearby power plant. A spokesman for Edison International, which runs the coal-fired plant, said workers shut down one of its two generators for several hours two weeks ago because of extreme heat and low water levels at the lake, which is used for cooling. In Nebraska, a stretch of the Platte River from Kearney in the central part of the state to Columbus in the east has gone dry and killed a “significant number” of sturgeon, catfish and minnows, said fisheries program manager Daryl Bauer. Bauer said the warm, shallow water has also killed an unknown number of endangered pallid sturgeon. “It’s a lot of miles of river, and a lot of fish,” Bauer said. “Most of those fish are barely identifiable. In this heat, they decay really fast.” Bauer said a single dry year usually isn’t enough to hurt the fish population. But he worries dry conditions in Nebraska could continue, repeating a stretch in the mid-2000s that weakened fish populations. Kansas also has seen declining water levels that pulled younger, smaller game fish away from the vegetation-rich shore lines and forced them to cluster, making them easier targets for predators, said fisheries chief Doug Nygren of the Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism. Nygren said he expects a drop in adult walleye populations in the state’s shallower, wind-swept lakes in southern Kansas. But he said other species, such as large-mouth bass, can tolerate the heat and may multiply faster without competition from walleye. “These last two years are the hottest we’ve ever seen,” Nygren said. “That really can play a role in changing populations, shifting it in favor of some species over others. The walleye won’t benefit from these high-water temperatures, but other species that are more tolerant may take advantage of their declining population.” Geno Adams, a fisheries program administrator in South Dakota, said there have been reports of isolated fish kills in its manmade lakes on the Missouri River and others in the eastern part of the state. But it’s unclear how much of a role the heat played in the deaths. One large batch of carp at Lewis and Clark Lake in the state’s southeast corner had lesions, a sign they were suffering from a bacterial infection. Adams said the fish are more prone to sickness with low water levels and extreme heat. But he added that other fish habitat have seen a record number this year thanks to the 2011 floods. “When we’re in a drought, there’s a struggle for water and it’s going in all different directions,” Adams said. “Keeping it in the reservoir for recreational fisheries is not at the top of the priority list.” Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
An aerial view over the Tongariro National Park. Photo / Greg Bowker
A “sudden rise” in volcanic activity at Mt Tongariro has prompted scientists to lift its volcanic alert status for the first time.
But local businesses and conservation authorities remain unconcerned as they seek to reassure visitors it is “business as usual” at National Park.
GNS Science this afternoon lifted Mt Tongariro’s volcanic alert status from level zero to level one, and increased the aviation status from green to yellow.
It said a series of more than 20 “small” volcanic earthquakes had been recorded at Tongariro since July 13 – more than the average of two per year according to historic seismic data.
The quakes, below a magnitude of 2.5 and between 2-7km deep, were recorded in a cluster zone between Emerald Crater and Te Maari craters.
The sequence of earthquakes soon declined but restarted on Wednesday and increased in number yesterday and today.
GNS volcanologist Brad Scott said it was the first time the alert level had been lifted at Tongariro since the alert system was introduced.
“It’s displaying some form of unrest. We don’t know exactly what’s driving it, if we did we’d be saying.”
To get a clearer picture, GNS would deploy portable seismic recorders around the epicentres of the earthquakes and conduct sampling of selected hot springs, crater lakes and fumaroles in the area.
“We’ve got our permanent networks out giving us data in real time… (and) we want to compliment that with some more data, just to add to our knowledge.”
Mt Tongariro is a volcanic complex that lies to the north of Ngauruhoe and consists of numerous craters and vents.
There are six alert levels of volcanic action, increasing in seriousness from zero to five. Alert level one indicates “signs of volcano unrest”.
For the alert level to be lifted to two – “minor eruptive activity” – there would need to be an eruption and there was no indication that would happen.
The aviation status yellow also acts as a warning of increased unrest.
Department of Conservation local conservation analyst Harry Keys said GNS Science was dealing with the matter and the department did not need to take any action at this stage.
The popular Tongariro Alpine Crossing passed close to Te Maari craters, where the most recent ash eruptions took place from 1855 to 1897.
But there was no hazard at the moment and the crossing would remain open to the public.
“There are public safety matters if the volcano starts getting active, but at the moment the volcano is not getting active and it may not ever get active,” he said.
“We’ve got everything ready if we have to do anything. We will then go to the next stage, but at the moment we’re not doing anything.”
Dr Keys said he would not expect more or fewer visitors at the moment.
“It’s definitely business as usual. People might make their own decisions, but there’s no reason at the moment they should make any decisions about what they’ve planned.”
National Park Business Association chairman Murray Wilson said the only problem with volcanic activity was when it interrupted visitor flows.
He had been at a regional tourism meeting today but the issue was not even raised.
“It’s just a fact of life around here and I don’t think anyone around the place will be to excited about that – it’s probably more of a technical response than a physical response.”
Mr Wilson said “media hype” had been the biggest issue the last time neighbouring Ruapehu had erupted in the 1990s.
“The people around here depend on uninterrupted visitor flows. Last year we had interrupted visitor flows because of the Rugby World Cup – as soon as the rugby started, people tended to stay at home and go to the rugby matches.”
He did not think there would be much impact unless it was “over-reported and people get worried”.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A strong earthquake has struck off the east coast of New Zealand, but there were no immediate reports of any injuries or damage.
The U.S. Geological Survey says the magnitude-5.8 temblor struck Saturday off the east coast of the North Island at a depth of 20 kilometers (12 miles).
New Zealand is prone to earthquakes. In February 2011, a strong quake in Christchurch killed 185 people and destroyed much of the city’s downtown area.
This is an illustration showing how the mantle plumes can be emitted from the core-mantle boundary region to reach the Earth’s crust. Due to the lateral displacement of the tectonic plates at the surface, the mantle plumes can create a series of aligned hot spot volcanoes. A mid ocean ridge and a subducted plate are also shown. Credit: ESRF/Denis Andrault/Henri Samuel. For a larger version of this image please go here.
Scientists have recreated the extreme conditions at the boundary between Earth’s core and its mantle, 2,900 km beneath the surface. Using the world’s most brilliant beam of X-rays, they probed speck-sized samples of rock at very high temperature and pressure to show for the first time that partially molten rock under these conditions is buoyant and should segregate towards the Earth’s surface.
This observation is a strong evidence for the theory that volcanic hotspots like the Hawaiian Islands originate from mantle plumes generated at the Earth’s core-mantle boundary. The results are published in Nature dated 19 July 2012.
The group of scientists was led by Denis Andrault from the Laboratoire Magmas et Volcans of University Blaise Pascal in Clermont, and included scientists from the CNRS in Clermont and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France.
Most volcanoes are situated where continental plates are pushed or pulled against each other. Here, the continental crust is weakened, and the magma can break through to the surface. The Pacific “Ring of Fire”, for example, exhibits such plate movements, resulting in powerful Earthquakes and numerous active volcanoes.
Volcanic hotspots are of a completely different nature because most of them are far away from plate boundaries. The Hawaiian Islands, for example, are a chain of volcanoes thought to have their origin in a mysterious hot spot beneath the Pacific ocean floor. Every island in the chain starts as an active volcano fed by the hot spot that eventually rises above the ocean surface. As plate tectonics move the volcano away from the hotspot, it becomes extinct.
The hot spot will in the meantime create another volcano: the next island in the chain. The Hawaiian Islands are one of many examples of this process, like the Canary Islands, La Reunion or the Azores.
The nature of the hot-spot source and its location in the mantle have remained elusive to the present day. One explanation is narrow streams of magma conveyed to the Earth’s surface from the boundary between the Earth’s core of liquid iron and the solid mantle of silicate rock. Whether the lowermost mantle expels such streams of magma called mantle plumes is one of today’s major controversies among geologists.
What material can be stored at the core-mantle boundary and become sufficiently light to rise through 2900 km of thick solid mantle? This was the question Denis Andrault and his colleagues addressed when they set out to recreate in a laboratory the conditions found at the core-mantle boundary.
They compressed tiny pieces of rock, the size of a speck of dust and ten times thinner than a human hair, between the tips of two conical diamonds to a pressure of more than one million bar. A laser beam then heated these samples to temperatures between 3000 and 4000 degrees Celsius, which scientists believe is representative of the 200km-thick core-mantle boundary. The samples are extremely small compared to the natural processes occurring in the Earth.
However, the melting processes are very well reproduced experimentally. Therefore, the observations can be confidently transferred from micron scale in the experiments to kilometre scale in the deep mantle.
Beams of X-rays at the ESRF, focused to a diameter of one 1000th of a millimetre, were used to map these samples and identify where the solid rock had melted. “Obviously, these tiny samples produce weak interaction signals, and this is why it is important to have the most brilliant X-ray beams for this type of experiments, says Mohammed Mezouar, the scientist responsible for the high-pressure beamline ID27 at the ESRF.
Once regions with molten rock had been identified, another X-ray technique was used at the ESRF to compare the chemical compositions of previously molten and solid parts. “It is the iron content which is decisive for the density of molten rock at the core-mantle boundary. Its accurate knowledge allowed us to determine that molten rock under these conditions is actually lighter than solid,” says Denis Andrault.
Gravity makes the light liquid rock from a hotspot move slowly upwards like a bubble in water until it reaches the surface where the magma plume will form a volcano. The hotspots of liquid occur in the relatively thin boundary region between the solid lower mantle and the liquid outer core of the Earth where the temperature rises over a distance of just 200 kilometres from 3000 to 4000 degrees. This steep rise is caused by the vicinity of the much hotter core and induces a partial melting of the rocks.
The results of the experiment are also of great significance for the understanding of the early history of the Earth, as they provide an explanation why many chemical elements playing a key role in our daily life gradually accumulated from the Earth’s inside to its thin crust, close to the surface.
“We know less about the Earth’s mantle than about the surface of Mars. It is impossible to drill a hole of even 100 kilometres into the Earth, so we have to recreate it in the laboratory. This is important knowledge, because active hot spot volcanoes like those in Iceland can be dangerous and disruptive for the daily lives of people far away”, concludes Denis Andrault.
FORT WORTH TX
OMAHA/VALLEY NE
HASTINGS NE
MEMPHIS TN
SPRINGFIELD MO
NORMAN OK
TULSA OK
GOODLAND KS
SIOUX FALLS SD
NORTH PLATTE NE
WICHITA KS
ST LOUIS MO
At least 12 people died during torrential rainstorms which battered much of northern and southwestern China from Friday night to Saturday, state media reported. In Beijing, strong winds blew off rooftops killing two people and injuring six others, the Beijing Emergency Medical Center reported. Heavy rain flooded roads and caused 223 flights to be cancelled in the capital, as the Beijing Meteorological Bureau issued its second-highest rainstorm alert for the first time since 2005. The report said Beijing received 95 mm of precipitation on average as of 7:00 pm (1100 GMT), and heavy rainfall is expected to last until Sunday morning.
The Interior Ministry sent a military transport plane with 83 firefighters to Madeira, where the flames briefly threatened the outskirts of the region’s capital and popular tourist destination Funchal on Wednesday night. Interior Minister Miguel Macedo also flew to Madeira to coordinate the efforts.
Firefighters from several departments started fighting a fast-spreading brush fire east of Ash Grove near U.S. 160 at Farm Road 43. Firefighters were dispatched at about 9 a.m. to fight a brush fire that was originally reported to be two acres in size. Crews from Everton, Bois D’Arc, Willard, Ash Grove and Walnut Grove worked to prevent the fire from spreading to a field with a machine shed in it. The fire spread to the outer edge of U.S. 160 close to at least one home. It wasn’t the peace and quiet for sleeping Stan Pyle planned on. “I work night shift at French’s, and I actually got home and got to bed. My wife just woke me up and said there’s a fire across the street, and my son and I hook up all the garden hoses we had,” Pyle says. Ash Grove and Walnut Grove firefighters were the first on the scene. “We had approximately two acres when we first got here, but the winds pushed it pretty fast on us,” says Ash Grove Fire Chief Anthony Monnig.
Firefighters contained a brush fire that threatened homes south of Horseshoe Bend Thursday afternoon. Officials tell us that about 10 to 20 homes on Horseshoe Bend Hill were evacuated. A spokesperson for the Bureau of Land Management said a lot of resources were put on the Summit Fire to keep it from spreading and destroying homes. Fire departments from Horseshoe Bend, Eagle and the BLM responded. Six fire engines, five structure protection units, two water tenders, one bulldozer, two helicopters and one plane were called to the scene. Windy conditions and dry brush fueled the fire, which burned around 100 acres. One outbuilding was lost in the fire. The fire was reported around 2:20 p.m. “When you do get a grass fire that burns hot and fast, those homes are usually in the direct path of that,” said Nevil Humphreys of the Eagle Fire Department. The fire burned to within about a quarter-mile of Highway 55, but the road remained open to traffic. Boise County Sheriff’s deputies went door-to-door urging residents near the fire to evacuate their homes.
The Kreitzer family lives in one of the homes that was evacuated. They were all out of the house when the fire started. Ingrid Kreitzer said their neighbor alerted them to the fire. “He called and he said, ‘You know, I think you probably should come up. It looks like it might be coming closer. You might just want to come down and hose anything in case it jumps over,’” Kreitzer said. She said with all the recent fires, her family had been creating a fire plan in case of the wildfire. Crews on the scene told us homes they saw had good defensible space, helping to keep them safe. “We were able to get in there, limb up some brush and what not,” said Paul Story, a firefighter who came in with his crew from Salt Lake to help with recent fires. “It was very minimal effort on our part, and so the homeowner did a good job in that regard.” Humphreys said the fire is human-caused and remains under investigation. No homes were destroyed in the fire.
Weather forecasters see no end in sight to the worst US drought in five decades, a blistering heatwave that has wilted crops across America’s crucial breadbasket and sent grain prices soaring.
Farmers are mulling cutting down crops and thinning livestock herds as meteorologists said the country’s central breadbasket, the world’s largest source of both soybeans and corn, faces another month of stifling, rainless heat.
Top US agriculture official Tom Vilsack announced Wednesday he was designating 39 more counties in eight states as “natural disaster areas,” making farmers there eligible for low-cost emergency loans. Nearly 1,300 counties across 29 states have been designated natural disaster areas this year.
Vilsack also met with President Barack Obama Wednesday to review options to deal with the drought.
Meanwhile, a World Bank official said they were watching to see how the drought could impact global food supplies, after sharp surges in food prices in 2008 and 2010 dealt harsh blows to poor, food-importing nations.
“While it’s too early to be overly concerned, the Bank is monitoring the situation closely for potential impacts on our clients,” said Marc Sadler, team leader for the World Bank’s Agricultural Finance and Risk Management Unit.
“Global stocks in most of the tradable grains are lower now than they have been historically… we don’t have as much in the larder as we used to.”
More than 60 percent of the continental United States has been under drought and extreme heat conditions since June, according to Mark Svoboda of the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Temperatures have topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) for days in a row in many places, with the central plains running three to four degrees Fahrenheit above normal this month.
Svoboda said the drought was as tough as the worst in the 1930s and 1950s, although those benchmarks were multi-season, multi-year disasters while the current situation only dates to May.
But, he pointed out, the timing of the lack of rain and the heat has been particularly devastating, coming just at the peak of the growing season with the epicenter the central US farm belt east of the Rocky Mountains all the way to the Atlantic coast.
It has hit corn, soybeans, and crops like hay needed to feed cattle especially hard.
Farmers are now looking at cutting their losses — chopping down fields of half-mature, ear-less corn to feed the stalks to cattle.
“The jury is still a little bit out on it. We are in that process right now, making that decision,” said Steve Foglesong, who raises cattle and farms corn in Astoria, Illinois.
“From the road the corn looks green, but there are no ears on it.”
Foglesong said the next two weeks will be crucial, but weather forecasters were not encouraging.
“The worst of the drought is right in the middle of the nation, the corn belt. It’s just been bone dry,” said Carl Erickson, a meteorologist at Accuweather.
“Unfortunately across the central plains, the Mississippi valley, it looks like the overall pattern will remain in place for the rest of the month and into August,” he said.
“Once you get into a pattern like this, it almost feeds on itself.”
Joseph Glauber, chief economist for the Department of Agriculture, said their surveys show that 38 percent of the corn crop, and 30 percent of the soybean crop, are considered in “poor” or “extremely poor” condition.
That compares to 9 percent and 8 percent respectively this time last year.
In the last big drought, in 1988, corn yields fell by more than 20 percent, Glauber noted. Although the department will wait until early August before reaching a conclusion about the crops, he said: “It’s evolving as we speak. Every week these crop conditions have gotten worse.”
Corn prices have soared by 50 percent since May, while the rate for soybeans, which develop later than corn and might be able to bear up under another few weeks of rainless conditions, has surged 26 percent.
Ironically, in a way, beef and other meat prices have fallen. Glauber said some ranchers facing higher feed prices appear to be reducing their herds, pushing livestock into the market.
Foglesong said that in addition, from what he can tell the heat wave has been so intense around so much of the country that consumers have curtailed their summer barbecues, also hitting demand for steaks, ribs and other products.
Over the longer term, Glauber said, the herd reductions will mean tighter supplies and higher prices for meat on top of the grains.
Svoboda said that the crops aren’t the only problem. The drought has already fed devastating wildfires in the west, and if it keeps on, he predicts cities will start running into limits on their water supplies, which could lead to water use controls.
Tropical storm Khanun destroyed scores of houses, buildings and transportation infrastructure in southern parts of North Korea this week, killing at least seven people in the reclusive state, state-run media reported on Friday. It weakened quickly over North Korea before Khanun’s remnants dissipated over China. The state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Friday that flooding triggered by Khanun caused significant damage and casualties in the southern regions of North Korea. It said at least seven people were killed in Kangwon Province, but few other details about casualties were released. “Many hectares of farmland were inundated in Kangwon province and some dwelling houses, public buildings, railways, roads, bridges, breakwaters, electric supply and communication networks were destroyed,” KCNA said in its report, adding that some areas saw up to 200 millimeters (7.8 inches) of rain. “The water supply system was paralyzed in Wonsan and Munchon cities, suspending the provision of drinking water to citizens.” In South Hwanghae province, several houses were destroyed in Haeju City and Jaeryong County while large areas of cropland were submerged in Unchon County. The report did not say whether there were casualties in South Hwanghae province, or in any other regions of North Korea. In South Korea, Khanun also caused flooding, power outages, and affected major transportation systems. One fatality was reported in North Gyeongsang province when the wall of a home collapsed, officials said.
A North Carolina mall was evacuated Friday when a thunderstorm that produced heavy rain caused the ceiling to collapse, officials said. The ceiling at SouthPark collapsed around 5 p.m., said Charlotte Fire Department Capt. Rob Brisley. He said by the time firefighters were dispatched to the mall, an evacuation was already under way. Brisley said firefighters also pulled the alarm systems in the mall to help with the evacuation, which he described as orderly. No injuries were reported. Brisley said firefighters were focusing on making sure the building was safe, and that the water damage could be addressed by mall workers. Mall personnel couldn’t be reached for additional comment Friday afternoon. It’s estimated that up to 3 inches of rain fell on south Charlotte in approximately 45 minutes, said Rodney Hinson, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Greer, S.C. Hinson said additional rain was likely to pass over Charlotte Friday night.
Mudslides unleashed by torrential rains killed one man, wrecked houses and cut off villages in the Austrian province of Styria, authorities said on Saturday. Police in the southeastern province said they had found the body of a 47-year-old local man swept away by a mudslide on Friday night in the town of Thoerl. Several small communities near Liezen were stranded by blocked roads. Austrian broadcaster ORF said helicopters evacuated around 20 people from the area after mudslides up to 10 meters (30 feet) high made travel by road impossible. A further 360 people had to leave their homes in the town of Sankt Lorenzen for fear of more slides given unrelenting rainfall, authorities said.
Director of Disease Prevention and Control at the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, Dr. Amara Jambai, has yesterday disclosed that the outbreak of Lassa fever in Kenema district. Lassa fever is a viral disease which is carried by rats. It is spread from infected rodents to humans through direct contact with urine and droppings of an infected rat. Speaking to journalists at the weekly press briefing at the Ministry of Information and Communications, Dr. Jambai said the outbreak, which started in three districts but has extended to other parts of the country, should be a serious concern to the government and people of Sierra Leone.
Biohazard name:
Lassa Fever Outbreak
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
Symptoms:
Status:
confirmed
21.07.2012
Epidemic
Sierra Leone
Northern Province, [Port Loko, Kambia, Pujehun and Kailahun districts]
Director of Disease Prevention and Control at the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, Dr. Amara Jambai, has yesterday disclosed that the outbreak of cholera in Port Loko, Kambia, Pujehun and Kailahun districts and the Western Area has claimed 62 lives so far. Speaking to journalists at the weekly press briefing at the Ministry of Information and Communications, Dr. Jambai said the outbreak, which started in three districts but has extended to other parts of the country, should be a serious concern to the government and people of Sierra Leone. Dr. Jambai explained adding that 26 cholera deaths have been reported in Kambia, 22 in Port Loko, nine in Pujehun and another nine in the Western Area which sum up to 62 cholera cases reported since January to date. “We have set up cholera treatment units at Macaulay Street and Connaught hospital with three more to follow. Also, we have provided technical assistance, drugs and rapid diagnostic test kits at various locations across the country,” he added to highlight measures his department has put in place to curtail the situation. He however warned that despite efforts by the health ministry to cub the outburst, people should be more careful about their food and water sources and should endeavour to always keep their environment clean.
Biohazard name:
Cholera Outbreak
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
A one-year-old boy from Davao City has been found positive for the Enterovirus-71 (EV-71), the mysterious illness that killed dozens of children in Cambodia. Health Secretary Enrique Ona said the screening and confirmatory tests done at the Research Institute of Tropical Medicine (RITM) revealed that of the eight suspected Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease (HFMD) patients, one was tested positive of the virus similar to the ones in Cambodia. Ona clarified, however, that the boy has no history of travel outside the country. “The virus is similar to Cambodia but this case is the mild one,” Ona told reporters in a press conference Friday. EV-71 causes diarrhea; rashes; and hand, foot and mouth disease; and is sometimes associated with severe central neurological disease. The virus, which was earlier tagged as a “mystery disease” in Cambodia, caused the deaths of 52 children there. Based on the details of the case, the official said the boy had developed fever and rashes on his hands, soles of feet, mouth and buttocks last July 6. He was brought for consultation at a local health facility but was subsequently sent home and has since recovered very well, Ona said. Although the victim’s family members have no sickness, they are still being closely monitored for possible manifestation of symptoms such as high fever, chest and muscle pain, sore throat and headache, Ona said.
Meantime, two HFMD patients were found negative of human Enterovirus while the five others will be further tested for Coxsackie A16, which is also associated with HFMD, the health official said. The health official said there is no vaccine on EV-71 yet, so the “approach is to monitor the cases.” Ona, however, reiterated that the incident should not come as a surprise to the public since EV-71 is not new to the Philippines. “This virus could have been here all along… Maybe, this specific strain has not been examined before, therefore, it has not been identified in the past,” Ona said. The DOH had already related in the past that there have been cases of human Enterovirus in the country but that they are not the fatal ones like those found in Cambodia. Meanwhile, the health department strongly urged the public to always maintain personal hygiene and cleanliness as this would be the best way against the virus. “Prevention relies on individual personal hygiene and hand washing; shared toys or teaching tools in daycare should be cleaned, washed and disinfected as they easily become contaminated,” said Ona.
Biohazard name:
Enterovirus-71 (EV-71)
Biohazard level:
3/4 Hight
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that can cause severe to fatal disease in humans, but for which vaccines or other treatments exist, such as anthrax, West Nile virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, SARS virus, variola virus (smallpox), tuberculosis, typhus, Rift Valley fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, yellow fever, and malaria. Among parasites Plasmodium falciparum, which causes Malaria, and Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes trypanosomiasis, also come under this level.
Building on previous work with the botanical abscisic acida, researchers in the Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medicine Laboratory (NIMML) have discovered that abscisic acid has anti-inflammatory effects in the lungs as well as in the gut. The results will be published in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry.
“While the immune effects of abscisic acid are well understood in the gut, less was known about its effects in the respiratory tract. We’ve shown definitively that not only does abscisic acid ameliorate disease activity and lung inflammatory pathology, it also aids recovery and survival in influenza-infected mice,” said Raquel Hontecillas, Ph.D., study leader, assistant professor of immunology at Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, and co-director of NIMML.
Influenza accounts for anywhere from 3,000 to 49,000 deaths per year in the United States alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control. It is difficult to treat if not caught immediately; antivirals usually become ineffective after the virus incubation period has passed and resistance to antiviral drugs poses a serious public health problem in the face of outbreaks.
Abscisic acid, however, has been shown to be most effective at about seven to ten days into the infection, targeting the immune response rather than the virus itself, which many researchers feel is a safer way to reduce flu-associated fatalities.
“Most drugs for respiratory infections target the virus itself, rather than the inflammatory responses caused by the virus. Abscisic acid activates peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma, a receptor that aids in reducing inflammation, through a newly identified pathwaya but it does so without the side effects of other agonists like thiazolidinediones, which are known to have strong adverse side effects.
The development of complementary and alternative Medicine approaches that modulate the host response has great promise in decreasing respiratory damage caused by influenza or other respiratory pathogens,” said Josep Bassaganya-Riera, Ph.D., director of NIMML and professor of nutritional immunology at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute.
From this and previous research, it’s clear that abscisic acid could yield a novel new way to combat inflammatory disease, both in the gut and the respiratory tract. By using host-targeted strategies to mediate disease, alternate pathways can be established to activate immune responses without the deadly side effects of many drugs currently on the market.
MessageToEagle.com – Mathematicians have discovered a new way to crinkle up the fabric of space-time, at least in theory.
“We show that space-time cannot be locally flat at a point where two shock waves collide,” said Blake Temple, professor of mathematics at UC Davis.
“This is a new kind of singularity in general relativity.”
The results are reported in two papers by Temple with graduate students Moritz Reintjes and Zeke Vogler, respectively, both published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A.
Einstein’s theory of general relativity explains gravity as a curvature in space-time. But the theory starts from the assumption that any local patch of space-time looks flat, Temple said.
A singularity is a patch of space-time that cannot be made to look flat in any coordinate system, Temple said. One example of a singularity is inside a black hole, where the curvature of space becomes extreme.
Temple and his collaborators study the mathematics of how shockwaves in a perfect fluid can affect the curvature of space-time in general relativity.
In earlier work, Temple and collaborator Joel Smoller, the Lamberto Cesari professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan, produced a model for the biggest shockwave of all, created from the Big Bang when the universe burst into existence.
A shockwave creates an abrupt change, or discontinuity, in the pressure and density of a fluid, and this creates a jump in the curvature.But it has been known since the 1960s that the jump in curvature created by a single shock wave is not enough to rule out the locally flat nature of space-time.
Vogler’s doctoral work used mathematics to simulate two shockwaves colliding, while Reintjes followed up with an analysis of the equations that describe what happens when shockwaves cross.
He found this created a new type of singularity, which he dubbed a “regularity singularity.”
What is surprising is that something as mild as interacting waves could create something as extreme as a space-time singularity, Temple said.
Illustration of twisted space-time around Earth. Image credit: NASA
Temple and his colleagues are investigating whether the steep gradients in the space-time fabric at a regularity singularity could create any effects that are measurable in the real world.
For example, they wonder whether they might produce gravity waves, Temple said. General relativity predicts that these are produced, for example, by the collision of massive objects like black holes, but they have not yet been observed in nature. Regularity singularities could also be formed within stars as shockwaves pass within them, the researchers theorize.
The algal bloom identified off the west coast is continuing to kill fish and shellfish in significant concentrations from north Galway to north Donegal. Up to 80 per cent of stock has been affected on some oyster farms in Donegal, and it is also having a negative impact on sea angling tourism, the Marine Institute has confirmed. The bloom is caused by Karenia mikimotoi, a phytoplankton of the dinoflagellate group which caused a red tide in 2005 that killed wild fish and shellfish. Samples of this new bloom, first detected in May, are being collected for Marine Institute monitoring by the Irish Coast Guard search and rescue helicopters. Marine Institute phytoplankton expert Joe Silke said the bloom was naturally occurring. It was not associated with pollution but contained a “toxic irritant” that damaged gills of shellfish, fish and invertebrates. Irish Farmers’ Association fish farm section chief executive Richie Flynn said if there was a “properly functioning” licensing system in place, farmers could take measures to move stock when such blooms occurred.
Biohazard name:
Red Tide
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
MessageToEagle.com – Some years ago, back in, 2005, over the slopes of Mount Gongga, China all rocks suddenly turned red.
In time, the entire region became known the “Red-Stone-Valley” and today it is a spectacular local tourist attraction.
For many years, scientists have wondered what caused the stones to unexpectedly change color?
Today, scientists can finally offer an explanation what is behind this strange phenomenon.
According to Guoxiang Liu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan, Hubei, China, and his colleagues, the rocks became red as a result of a newly discovered variety of the algae Trentepohlia jolithus that suddenly expanded.
The stones suddenly changed color. Image credit: Guoxiang Liu
In their research paper, Liu and his colleagues write that ” Trentepohlia is a genus of subaerial green algae which is widespread in tropical, subtropical, and also temperate regions with humid climates”.The scientists state that the reason the algae Trentepohlia jolithus started to expand is due to global warming as well as various human activities.
“This new variety only grows on the native rock, both global warming and human activity have provided massive areas of suitable substrata: the rocks surfaces of the Yajiageng river valley floodplain were re-exposed because of heavy debris flows in the summer of 2005; plus human activities such as tourism and road-building have also created a lot of exposed rock!” Liu and his team write.
Red-Stone-Valley and the stones covered with Trentepohlia-carpets.
2A-2B: Red-stone Valley and the Yajiageng River; 2C: Red Trentepohlia-carpet in a cold winter; 2D: Trentepohlia growing on stone walls near the road; 2E: Red-Stone-Valley and Yajiageng River; 2F-2G: Red-Stone-Valley in foggy conditions; 2H: Tibetan Ni-ma stack with Trentepohlia growing on it. 2I: Red-Stone-Valley in winter. Image credit: PLoS One
Microscopic view of Trentepohlia jolithus. Image credit: PLoS One
Today, most of the rocks are covered with deep red colored algal carpets in the Yajiageng river valley.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
Colombia evacuated people from communities close to the Nevado del Ruiz volcano after an eruption on Saturday that spewed smoke and ash from its crater, bringing back memories of avalanches that in 1985 buried tens of thousands under rocks. President Juan Manuel Santos said on his Twitter account that the area around the Nevado del Ruiz, in the central spine of Colombia’s Andean mountain range, had been put on red alert and people should leave the area. Even as volcanic activity began to subside, emergency services urged 4,800 residents in Caldas and nearby Tolima province to get to safety, according to Carlos Ivan Marquez, who heads the security effort. The volcano is about 110 miles west of the capital Bogota.
From Reddit, this photo of a very hot dog in the heat wave. “No air conditioning in my car , this is my dogs reaction… Priceless.” Don’t worry, the photo poster reassured viewers that “[h]e’s fine we were in the car for 5 mins he’s running around right now like a psycho.”
High temperature records have been falling by the wayside so far this year, and the current heat wave now has more, including all-time records in jeopardy.
Never mind highs near 100 degrees. The current heat wave has temperatures pushing 102, 105 even 108 degrees in portions of the Plains, Midwest, South and East.
UPDATE: All-Time Record Highs Set Saturday
–Columbus, GA set an all time record of 106, breaking the previous all-time record of 105 which was set on Friday. The daily record high was 100 set in 1959.
–Macon, GA tied the all-time record high of 108, which was last set in 1980. The record high for the day was 103 set in 1959.
–Knoxville, TN set an all-time record high of 105, breaking the previous all-time record high of 104 set on July 12th, 1930. The previous record high for the day was 100, set in 1952.
–Tri-cities, TN set an all-time record high of 103 degrees, breaking the previous all-time record of 102 set on June 29, 2012 and July 29, 1952. The previous daily record high was only 95, set in 1959.
–Chattanooga, TN set an all-time record high of 107 degrees, breaking the previous all-time record of 106 set on June 29, 2012 and July 28, 1952. The previous daily record was 103 degrees set in 1952.
–Charlotte, NC tied an all-time record high of 104 degrees, last set on August 10, 2007. The record high for the day was 102 set in 1959.
–Atlanta, GA set an all-time record of 106 degrees, breaking the previous all-time record of 105 set in 1980. The previous daily record was 98 degrees set in 1936, broken by a whopping 8 degrees!
–Columbia, SC tied the all-time record high of 109 which was set on Friday. The record for the day was 103, set in 1959.
–Raleigh, NC tied the all-time record high temperature of 105 which was last set on Friday and set before that on July 23, 1952. The record for the day was 102 set in 1959.
Meteorologist DJ Hoffman pointed out that as of Thursday, June 28, 2012, more than 20,900 record highs have been broken to date this year.
“We have had over 7,700 more record highs this year, compared to last year, despite 2011′s South Central states heat and drought,” Hoffman said.
The temperature pattern this year got a jump start from way back at the tail end of the winter. Multiple days of record highs were set from the central Plains and Rockies to the Great Lakes during March. Chicago had nine days in a row of record highs spanning March 14 to 22.
Indianapolis came within 3 degrees of tying their all-time record high of 107 degrees during Thursday with a high of 104 degrees.
A “sea of heat” covers much of the Central states and the South. This National Weather Service map shows high temperatures from Thursday, June 28, 2012.
Meanwhile, about 130 miles away in the Hoosier State, in Fort Wayne, the temperature tied their all-time record high set during the dust bowl era in 1936 and 1934, as well as during the blistering summer of 1988.
According to Climatologist Jim Rourke, “Other vicious extreme high temperatures Thursday included Russell, Kan., with 110 degrees; St. Louis, Mo., with 108 degrees; Little Rock, Ark., with 107 degrees; Kansas City, Mo., with 106 degrees; Nashville, Tenn., with 105 degrees and Dayton, Ohio, with 102 degrees.”
“All of these locations and many others not only broke or tied daily record highs for the date, but also set June all-time record highs during the current heat wave,” Rourke said.
During the next couple of days, temperatures are forecast to reach 100 degrees or higher once again in the central and southern Plains to the Ohio Valley. However, even areas in the central and southern Appalachians and the coastal plain in the South and mid-Atlantic will do the same.
Columbia, S.C. has broken their all-time record high of 107 degrees set on multiple dates. During Friday afternoon, temperatures reached 109 degrees.
During Friday afternoon, Nashville broke its all-time record high of 107 degrees set in 1952 by reaching 109 degrees.
Atlanta is on pace to reach or exceed its all-time record high of 105 degrees set on July 17, 1980, before the weekend is over.
Charlotte, N.C., tied its all-time record high of 104 degrees set in 1954 and tied in 2007.
Washington, D.C., broke its June record of 102 set in 2011, when the temperature reached 104 degrees Friday afternoon. The all-time record high is 106 degrees set on July 20, 1930.
Temperatures Friday afternoon inched close to the all-time record of 108 degrees at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor with a high of 106 degrees.
According to Long Range Expert Paul Pastelok, “Given the persistence of the large high pressure area producing the heat and dry conditions thus far, this will not be the last of widespread triple-digit readings this summer.”
“While the heat will tend to be intermittent from the northern Plains to the Northeast, indications are that more of this sort of thing can continue from the southern and central Plains to the interior South in the coming weeks,” Pastelok said.
When a temperature has reached or surpassed the highest temperature on “record” for a particular location, it is considered to be an “all-time record high.
In many cases, temperature records have been kept for 120 years or more in major cities, while some temperature records in smaller cities and towns may only be in the books for a few decades.
Current, official temperature readings are taken at height of about 6 feet off the ground with no direct exposure to the sun or reflection from the sun or warm surfaces.
Many temperature and weather observation sites are located at airfields.
Before the arrival of airfields during the early 1900s, most observations were taken in inner cities, and while they were accurate to where they were located, they would give higher readings than say in a countryside or suburban location, where most airfields exist, due to the heat island effect.
The heat wave is also playing interesting tricks with nighttime temperatures.
Near the outer edge of the heat wave, where a breeze stays up at night and the humidity is elevated, temperatures barely dipped below average daytime highs for the date.
According to Senior Meteorologists Rob Miller, “In Pittsburgh, the temperature never fell below 80 degrees last night. If it fails to do so before midnight, it will be the warmest night in the Steel City since July 21, 1930.
In Des Moines, Iowa, the low temperature on Thursday was a mere 81 degrees. According to the National Weather Service, it was only the second time in 75 years in which the low temperature was 81 degrees or higher. The last time this occurred was on July 12, 1966.
Meanwhile, in the middle of building drought areas of Arkansas, near the center of the high pressure area and a pocket of dry air, the atmosphere is behaving like a desert. At North Little Rock Airport, the temperature began Thursday at 63 degrees, then reached 107 degrees the same afternoon.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has declared a state of emergency in Baltimore due the amount of people still without power following a round of severe storms. The mayor signed the declaration because there are still about 90,000 people without power in the city after strong storms swept through the area on Friday night, according to a news release. Declaring the emergency allows the city to put emergency plans in place, and is an important step in allowing the city to apply for reimbursement from the federal and state governments for some expenses associated with storm recovery.
01.07.2012
Extreme Weather
China
MultiProvinces, [Provinces of Zhejiang, Guangxi, Hunan, Fujian, Anhui, Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou ]
Several parts of China have been hit by torrential rains over the last few days, resulting in the evacuation of millions of people and property damage. In east China’s Zhejiang province, heavy rains have forced 17,000 people to relocate and affected the lives of more than 350,000 others since June 22. A 12-year-old girl was killed when her house was buried in a landslide on Saturday in Zhejiang’s Songyang county. Rains have battered central China’s Hunan province since June 21, killing one person, leaving another missing and affecting the lives of 138,000 others. A landslide was triggered in Hunan’s city of Chenzhou, blocking roads and rivers and stranding 130 tourists, the report said. South China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region has been reeling under heavy downpours since June 21. In the hard-hit city of Hezhou, over 10,000 people have been evacuated and economic losses of 200 million yuan ($31.4 million) have been incurred, according to officials. One resident of Hezhou died in hospital after suffering serious injuries during a landslide, while another was crushed to death during a house collapse. More rain and storms are expected to hit Zhejiang, Fujian and Anhui provinces in south China, as well as Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou provinces in the south-west over the next three days, the weather office said.
President Barack Obama issued an emergency declaration for West Virginia on Saturday following violent storms that downed trees and power lines across the state, leaving more than 680,000 without electricity as temperatures in the 90s continued. The emergency declaration authorizes the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide help and coordinate relief efforts. Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency early Saturday morning after the storms swept across the state Friday night.
Firefighters battling the 2,000-acre Waldo Canyon fire that erupted west of Colorado Springs Saturday are preparing for the worst Sunday, a perfect storm of hot weather, rugged terrain, and aggressive flames. “Tomorrow could be very explosive,” said Mike Smith, the fire information officer for the U.S. Forest Service, said Saturday after the fire had exploded over 1,000 acres and appeared headed in all directions. Another forest service spokesman, Greg Heule, said he expected the dry winds and scorching Saturday temperatures would keep the Waldo Canyon blaze burning throughout the night. Heule wouldn’t predict flare-ups on Sunday, but suspected that hot, dry conditions would make Sunday another challenging day for firefighting. As the sun set on the billowing smoke Saturday evening, trees continued to torch, bursting into flames that could be seen across Colorado Springs. “We saw what the fire behavior was like. We see what it’s like now—we have trees that are torching off,” Heule said just before 9 p.m. Saturday. “What that indicates to me is that conditions are ripe for aggressive fire behavior. I’m not Mother Nature. I don’t make predictions,” he added.
Erratic winds, steep terrain, tinder-dry trees, and near-record high temperatures have made fighting the Waldo Canyon fire a challenge for the 350 firefighters from across the Pikes Peak region and beyond who raced to battle the blaze after it started just after noon with a towering column of black smoke. The 2,000-acre fire burned with multiple heads as it moved across the hillsides, stretching to the north and northwest, and as well as making an unusual run to the southwest — downhill and against the prevailing winds. The cause of the fire was unknown. Two single engine air tankers, two heavy air tankers, and one massive helicopter flew over the blaze Saturday, under the watchful-eye of one air attack plane, an airborne command center, said Heule. More than 1,000 homes and as many as 2,300 people were evacuated from Colorado Springs and portions of El Paso County, said El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa. An unknown number of people were also evacuated from the Ute Pass area, near Cascade, said El Paso County Commissioner Sallie Clark. All recreational areas on the hills west of Col.orado Springs were shut down Saturday afternoon, including the Garden of the Gods Park, the Pikes Peak Highway, Waldo Canyon trail, and the Cog Railway, said Sunny Smaldino, spokeswoman for the Colorado Springs Fire Department. Sections of Rampart Range Road, which was initially the only point of access for firefighters trying to reach fire, burned, said Sheriff Maketa.
A Type 1 incident command team, the highest classification for fire-disasters, was requested by local fire officials and was expected to take the lead Sunday morning to take charge on Monday, said Maketa. As the fire burned through dense trees and fallen logs — what firefighters call heavy fuels — it sent up thick columns of jet-black smoke Saturday. There are more of these fuels to burn in the hills, Smith said, and Sunday’s possibility for more near-record highs, between 95 and 100 degrees, could add to the conflagration. Within minutes after the fire was first spotted the white smoke it spewed turned black, bursting into a tall column that could be seen from across the region. Firefighters were quickly amassed from Colorado Springs, Green Mountain Falls, and Woodland Park. Two Forest Service Hotshot crews came down from Lake George, where they were fighting the 1,145-acre Springer fire. An incident command post was set up at a Safeway parking lot on West Colorado Avenue, where the city officials and some residents gathered to glean the latest news. Mandatory evacuations were issued for the 200 homes Cedar Heights neighborhood, an exclusive gated community west of the Garden of the Gods. An additional 850 homes were evacuated in the Garden of the Gods Park and parts of the nearby Mountain Shadows neighborhood. Colorado Springs police were sent to make door-to-door calls to drive those residents in the evacuation zones out of their homes.
The evacuation alerts confused several residents on the Westside Saturday afternoon. Some voluntary evacuations for the northern section of the Mountain Shadows neighborhood were issued and then rescinded. One Manitou Springs woman, who asked not to be named, said she received a reverse 911 call and knock on her door telling her to leave Saturday, although her neighborhood was not evacuated. Despite its fury, the Waldo canyon fire hadn’t damaged structures Saturday. By 9 p.m. Saturday, a command team, consisting of Forest Service officials, the Colorado Springs Fire Department and the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, had not decidedwhether firefighetrs would do battle with the Waldo Canyon fire until dawn. Firefighters are also worried about more blazes igniting in the dry hills and plains. The fire department and sheriff’s office called in off-duty firefighters and deputies to bolster forces in the city and county. Thirty-two deputies were called in to monitor evacuation zones, and 12 off-duty firefighters were brought in to staff three engines in the city. The fire department also called on fire crews from the Cheyenne Mountain, Cimarron, and Stratmoor Hills fire department to help bolster Colorado Springs fire stations exmptied when firefighters deployed to Waldo Canyon. As for what the Waldo Canyon fire will cost the city of Colorado Springs, already under budget constraints, fire Chief Rich Brown said it is too early to tell.
Today
Forest / Wild Fire
USA
State of Montana, [Ash Creek (Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation)]
Authorities in eastern Montana ordered the evacuation of several communities Saturday as the Ash Creek Complex fires consumed another 72 square miles and pushed the number of structures destroyed past 30. The Powder River County Sheriff’s office ordered Wilbur, Whitetail, Beaver Creek and East Fork of Otter Creek residents out after the fire swelled to 244 square miles overnight. Fire spokesman Pat McKelvey said one home and five outbuildings were destroyed overnight but no injuries were reported due to the lightning-caused fire that started Monday. The fire had destroyed at least 26 structures previously. “We did have significant movement to the east,” he said, noting embers were causing spot fires a mile ahead of the main fire that’s burning in timber, juniper, pine, sage and grass. He said officials were looking at Saturday as a chance to possibly strengthen fire lines before Sunday when high winds and lower humidity are predicted. The fire is about 25 percent contained. “We are figuring today will be a lull day, if you can call 90 degree temperatures a lull,” he said. Nearly 450 firefighters are at the blaze with more being called in, McKelvey said, adding that two helicopters are working the fire and fixed-wing retardant bombers are also available.
Firefighters moved quickly to get a handle on a wildfire that has burned 96 acres of dry brush in the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles. Los Angeles County Fire dispatcher Andre Gougis says the fire north of Wrightwood near the San Bernardino County line is 80 percent contained Saturday night. Crews got help from water-dropping aircraft as they worked to keep the flames from moving east into the Pinyon Hills area. Gougis says there has been no damage or injuries. Route 138 near Route 18 was briefly closed in both directions. The fire was reported just before noon. The cause is under investigation.
University of Nevada, Reno, researchers were joined by a Scripps Institution of Oceanography research team, spending many days on Fallen Leaf Lake to gather sonar and side-scan radar data to study earthquake faults and paleoshorelines. The low-tech boat was adorned with high-tech hardware, such as gyroscopes used on rockets, to gather high-resolution images of the lake bottom. Using standing trees they found submerged under 130 feet of water, the team confirmed and reported in their paper, a culmination of a comprehensive high-tech assessment of Fallen Leaf Lake – a small moraine-bound lake at the south end of the Lake Tahoe Basin – that stands of pre-Medieval trees in the lake suggest the region experienced severe drought at least every 650 to 1,150 years during the mid- and late-Holocene period. Credit: Photo by Mike Wolterbeek, University of Nevada, Reno.
The erratic year-to-year swings in precipitation totals in the Reno-Tahoe area conjures up the word “drought” every couple of years, and this year is no exception. The Nevada State Climate Office at the University of Nevada, Reno, in conjunction with the Nevada Drought Response Committee, just announced a Stage 1 drought (moderate) for six counties and a Stage 2 drought (severe) for 11 counties.
Reno, Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada are no strangers to drought, the most famous being the Medieval megadrought lasting from 800 to 1250 A.D. when annual precipitation was less than 60 percent of normal. The Reno-Tahoe region is now about 65 percent of annual normal precipitation for the year, which doesn’t seem like much, but imagine if this were the “norm” each and every year for the next 200 years.
Research by scientists at the University of Nevada, Reno and their partners at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego indicates that there are other instances of such long-lasting, severe droughts in the western United States throughout history.
Their recent paper, a culmination of a comprehensive high-tech assessment of Fallen Leaf Lake – a small moraine-bound lake at the south end of the Lake Tahoe Basin – reports that stands of pre-Medieval trees in the lake suggest the region experienced severe drought at least every 650 to 1,150 years during the mid- and late-Holocene period.
“Using an arsenal of cutting edge sonar tools, remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), and a manned submersible, we’ve obtained potentially the most accurate record thus far on the instances of 200-year-long droughts in the Sierra,” Graham Kent, director of the Nevada Seismological Laboratory said.
“The record from Fallen Leaf Lake confirms what was expected and is likely the most accurate record, in terms of precipitation, than obtained previously from a variety of methods throughout the Sierra.”
Kent is part of the University of Nevada, Reno and Scripps research team that traced the megadroughts and dry spells of the region using tree-ring analysis, shoreline records and sediment deposition in Fallen Leaf Lake.
Using side-scan and multibeam sonar technology developed to map underwater earthquake fault lines such as the West Tahoe fault beneath Fallen Leaf Lake, the team also imaged standing trees up to 130 feet beneath the lake surface as well as submerged ancient shoreline structure and development.
The trees matured while the lake level was 130 to 200 feet below its modern elevation and were not deposited by a landslide as was suspected.
The team, led by John Kleppe, University of Nevada, Reno engineering professor emeritus, published a paper on this research and is presenting its findings in seminars and workshops.
“The lake is like a ‘canary in a coal mine’ for the Sierra, telling the story of precipitation very clearly,” Kent said.
“Fallen Leaf Lake elevations change rapidly due to its unique ratio between catchment basin and lake surface of about 8 to 1. With analysis of the standing trees submerged in the lake, sediment cores and our sonar scanning of ancient shorelines, we can more accurately and easily trace the precipitation history of the region.”
Water balance calculations and analysis of tree-ring samples undertaken by Kleppe, Kent and Scripps scientists Danny Brothers and Neal Driscoll, along with Professor Franco Biondi of the University’s College of Science, suggest annual precipitation was less than 60 percent of normal from the late 10th century to the early 13th century.
Their research was documented in a scientific paper, Duration and severity of Medieval drought in the Lake Tahoe Basin, published in the Quaternary Science Reviews in November 2011.
Tree-ring records and submerged paleoshoreline geomorphology suggest a Medieval low-lake level of Fallen Leaf Lake lasted more than 220 years. More than 80 trees were found lying on the lake floor at various elevations above the paleoshoreline.
“Although the ancient cycle of megadroughts seems to occur every 650 to 1150 years and the last one was 750 years ago, it is uncertain when the next megadrought will occur. With climate change upon us, it will be interesting to see how carbon dioxide loading in the atmosphere will affect this cycle,” Kent said.
Professor Paula Noble, in the University’s College of Science’s Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering, is expanding this research to include the fine-scale study of climate change through out the Holocene (about 12,000 years) using recently collected 40-foot-long sediment cores in Fallen Leaf Lake.
Power lines are down across the Midwest and mid-Atlantic after winds sped up to 90 mph during Friday night’s storm. (Photo courtesy of Twitter user @Smoflake88)
For ice cream vendors selling frozen treats and cold water on the beaches near Atlantic City, N.J., it’s a great day for business.
Thousands flocked to the beach Saturday to escape the heat after a super derecho knocked out the power of more than three million people across the Midwest and mid-Atlantic regions.
James Diecidue, who sells ice cream along the beach in Margate City, N.J., said the beaches are extremely crowded. Many of his customers keep asking him if the city has regained power yet.
“A lot of people are buying water and ice cream here because a lot of people still don’t have power at home,” he said.
While those affected by the storm along the coast have the option to cool down with an ocean minutes away, other areas aren’t so lucky.
Authorities in non-coastal regions have had to think of other ways to keep their community cool in this weekend’s scorching temperatures.
Prince George’s County in Maryland opened cooling centers where local residents without power can refuge from the 100-degree weather that plagued their area today.
Scott Peterson, the county’s deputy manager of communications, said they’ve provided information about where to locate cooling centers through social media and online press releases that people can view with their smart phones if they don’t have power.
“We’ve been going through every means necessary to make sure they know we have places they can go to cool down,” Peterson said. “We’re highlighting what’s still open with power in the region like malls and hotels. Everyone’s working together.”
Emergency Management Coordinator Emily Ashley of Chesterfield County, Va., said the town’s local libraries will keep their doors open past normal hours, and though usually closed on Sundays, will also open tomorrow until 6 p.m.
Ashley said dealing with the significant power outages has been difficult because critical buildings that would normally act as a refuge are the ones that are without power.
The Virginia Department of Emergency Management also created a Tumblr blog that lists open cooling centers by county, damage reports and power restoration updates.
According to electric companies, it could be a week before power is restored in some areas, especially major cities like Washington, D.C.
………………………………..
Violent Storms rip through Eastern US leaving 10 dead & 2 Million without power in mist of heat wave
Ireland has been hit by torrential rain as the summer disappears again – with parts of Cork and Belfast flooded.
Emergency services are struggling to cope with the flash floods across the country as homes are left without electricity.
The towns of Douglas, Bandon and Clonakilty in Cork are badly flooded with some areas under three feet of water.
Residents were evacuated from the Ballyvolane area of Cork city while there is no access in or out of Clonakilty.
The Irish Independent reports that up to 15,000 homes in Cork are currently without electricity after the overnight storms which saw 70mm of rain fall in a few hours.
Flooding has also been reported in parts of Sligo and Tipperary and motorists have been warned to take extreme care.
Cork County Council has confirmed that it activated a flood response plan after the torrential rain.
Ireland’s weather service Met Eireann issued a flood alert to more than a dozen county councils with 70mm of rain forecast to fall in parts of Munster, Connacht, south Leinster and the midlands.
Despite warm temperatures, there could be torrential downpours due to heavy thunderstorms according to Met Eireann.
“The worst of the rain is over but it has been the wettest June on record,” said forecaster Evelyn Cusack.
Belfast has also been badly hit by the torrential rain. A police spokeswoman said: “Most of the main arterial routes in east and south Belfast are impassable due to flooding, abandoned cars and debris.”
Gov. Bob McDonnell declared a state of emergency Saturday after a powerful storm killed six people in the state and knocked out power for hundreds of thousands, leaving them without air-conditioning in the middle of a blistering heat wave.
“This is a very dangerous situation for Virginia,” McDonnell said at a news conference at the state’s Emergency Operations Center. He said the threat of more storms, continued extreme heat and the largest non-hurricane power outage in state history — and fifth largest ever — could mean a few more days of misery.
McDonnell urged Virginians to look out for their neighbors, especially elderly people who are more vulnerable to heat-related illnesses.
“Be your neighbor’s keeper,” he said.
The governor’s emergency declaration activated 300 National Guard troops to help the state recover from straight-line winds of up to 80 miles an hour that felled trees and power lines and closed about 250 secondary roads.
Fairfax County police said trees blown down by heavy winds killed one person in a car and a 90-year-old woman sleeping in her bed. In Albemarle County, police said 64-year-old John Porter was killed by a falling tree outside his house and Catherine Ford was killed when she got out of her car, which was blocked by fallen trees, and was hit by another toppled tree.
The Bedford County Sheriff’s Office said an elderly couple died in a fire that appears to have been caused by the storm.
About 769,500 customers of Appalachian Power and Dominion remained without service late Saturday afternoon. That was down from a peak of more than 1.2 million earlier in the day.
In South Hampton Roads, the storm knocked out power and brought down tree limbs, but no major damage was reported, according to police dispatchers in the five cities.
The Newport News Fire Department responded to about 27 calls for service overnight, according to a city news release. Crews responded to four separate calls for trees that fell onto structures and onto boats in distress, the release said.
Nearly 5,200 Dominion Virginia Power customers in Southeastern Virginia, which includes South Hampton Roads and the Peninsula, were out of power as of 7:15 p.m., according to the company’s website.
Wind gusts topped 74 mph at the Franklin Airport in Isle of Wight Co. late Friday night, according to the National Weather Service in Wakefield, Va. In Portsmouth, wind gusts topped 61 mph at early Saturday morning, the service said.
Rodney Blevins of utility giant Dominion said it was unclear how long it will take to get power fully restored but added that Virginians should “anticipate long outages.”
Tracey Phalen of Richmond could relate to that advice. After enduring six days without electricity because of Hurricane Irene last summer, she was bracing for another uncomfortable stretch because of the latest storm-related outage.
“I think it’s going to get bad,” she said as she and her teenage son relaxed under the shade of a coffee-house umbrella. “But I always tend to think there are a lot of people who have it worse.”
She said her family would find someplace cool to get through the day.
“We’ll probably go to a movie theater at the top of the day,” she said.
Dozens of schools, fire stations and community centers were opened across the state as cooling centers, but many Virginians found other ways to avoid the heat.
Brett Shiflett of Richmond said she would be staying with various family members in the area after the storm sent a tree crashing into the apartment above hers, cutting off power and leaving her kitchen a soggy shambles.
“I’m going to be house-hopping for a while,” she said.
The huge tree wiped out the rear portion of the upstairs apartment. A bed with a broken headboard was covered with debris was a tangled mess of bricks and lumber from what used to be a deck.
Had the storm hit later, David Fetchko’s girlfriend might have been sleeping in that bed.
“She probably would have been killed,” said Fetchko, who relayed a message from his girlfriend that she was still too shaken to talk about the ordeal.
Shiflett was home when the tree fell.
“It sounded like an earthquake and like someone upstairs fell really hard,” she said. Then it started raining in her kitchen, which is directly below her neighbor’s demolished bedroom.
“It’s a little traumatizing,” she said.
Others in the city also were cleaning up after the storm and contemplating how they were going to cope with the relentless heat.
“I’m heading to the river to sit in the water with the dog,” Tricia Pearsall said as she swept up fallen tree branches in front of her 170-year-old home downtown. “We’re lucky to have air-conditioning, but I’d rather be in the river.”
Ramel Lloyd was waiting for a friend to come over with a nail gun to reattach four sections of privacy fencing that were flattened at the home he just bought three weeks ago. The storm also ripped off a small section of siding, and a power surge apparently caused a ceiling fan to catch fire.
“Luckily, everyone is safe,” he said. “It was an eventful 12 hours, to say the least.”
Around the corner from Lloyd’s house, a large tree crushed two cars, including Greg Hough’s compact wagon.
“It’s totaled,” Hough said. “The golf clubs are OK though.”
Pilot staffers Jennifer Jiggetts and Sarah Hutchins contributed to this report.
Gauhati Raging floodwaters fed by monsoon rains have inundated more than 2,000 villages in northeast India, killing at least 27 people and leaving hundreds of thousands more marooned Friday. The Indian air force was delivering food packages to people huddled on patches of dry land along with cattle and wild elephants. Rescuers were being dropped by helicopter into affected areas to help the stranded. About one million people have been forced to evacuate as the floods from the swollen Brahmaputra River – one of Asia’s largest – swamped 2,084 villages across most of Assam state, officials said. Officials have counted 27 people dead so far, but the toll is expected to be much higher as unconfirmed casualty reports mount. Telephone lines were knocked out and some train services were cancelled after their tracks were swamped by mud. As the floods soaked the Kaziranga game reserve east of Assam’s capital of Gauhati, motorists reported seeing a one-horned rhino fleeing along a busy highway. “We never thought the situation would turn this grim when the monsoon-fed rivers swelled a week ago,” said Nilomoni Sen Deka, an Assam government minister. Residents of Majuli – an 800-square-kilometre island in the middle of the Brahmaputra River – watched helplessly as the swirling, grey waters swallowed 50 villages and swept away their homes. “We are left with only the clothes we are wearing,” said 60-year-old Puniram Hazarika, one of about 75,000 island residents now camping in makeshift shelters of bamboo sticks and plastic tarps on top of a mud embankment. A herd of 70 endangered Asiatic elephants, which usually avoid humans, were grouped together nearby, Majuli island wildlife official Atul Das said. “The jumbos have not caused any harm, but we are keeping a close watch,” he said.
Five people have lost their lives to dengue in Karntaka since January 2012, but none in Bangalore. The city has reported 45 positive cases of dengue as per the recent report given out by BBMP. In the last 14 days, there have been 13 positive cases reported in the city. There were ten cases reported in the month of May. On Tuesday, Bangalore Mayor D Venkatesh Murthy had a meeting with the health officers of the Palike and instructed them to submit a report everyday on the about the dengue cases reported across the city.
Biohazard name:
Dengue Fever
Biohazard level:
3/4 Hight
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that can cause severe to fatal disease in humans, but for which vaccines or other treatments exist, such as anthrax, West Nile virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, SARS virus, variola virus (smallpox), tuberculosis, typhus, Rift Valley fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, yellow fever, and malaria. Among parasites Plasmodium falciparum, which causes Malaria, and Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes trypanosomiasis, also come under this level.
by Staff Writers
New Haven CT (SPX) “In effect,” Kahan said, “ordinary members of the public credit or dismiss scientific information on disputed issues based on whether the information strengthens or weakens their ties to others who share their values. At least among ordinary members of the public, individuals with higher science comprehension are even better at fitting the evidence to their group commitments.”
Are members of the public divided about climate change because they don’t understand the science behind it? If Americans knew more basic science and were more proficient in technical reasoning, would public consensus match scientific consensus? A study published online in the journal Nature Climate Change suggests that the answer to both questions is no.
Indeed, as members of the public become more science literate and numerate, the study found, individuals belonging to opposing cultural groups become even more divided on the risks that climate change poses.
Funded by the National Science Foundation, the study was conducted by researchers associated with the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School and involved a nationally representative sample of 1500 U.S. adults.
“The aim of the study was to test two hypotheses,” said Dan Kahan, Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology at Yale Law School and a member of the study team.
“The first attributes political controversy over climate change to the public’s limited ability to comprehend science, and the second, to opposing sets of cultural values. The findings supported the second hypothesis and not the first,” he said.
“Cultural cognition” is the term used to describe the process by which individuals’ group values shape their perceptions of societal risks. It refers to the unconscious tendency of people to fit evidence of risk to positions that predominate in groups to which they belong.
The results of the study were consistent with previous studies that show that individuals with more egalitarian values disagree sharply with individuals who have more individualistic ones on the risks associated with nuclear power, gun possession, and the HPV vaccine for school girls.
In this study, researchers measured “science literacy” with test items developed by the National Science Foundation. They also measured their subjects’ “numeracy”-that is, their ability and disposition to understand quantitative information.
“In effect,” Kahan said, “ordinary members of the public credit or dismiss scientific information on disputed issues based on whether the information strengthens or weakens their ties to others who share their values. At least among ordinary members of the public, individuals with higher science comprehension are even better at fitting the evidence to their group commitments.”
Kahan said that the study supports no inferences about the reasoning of scientific experts in climate change.
Researcher Ellen Peters of Ohio State University said that people who are higher in numeracy and science literacy usually make better decisions in complex technical situations, but the study clearly casts doubt on the notion that the more you understand science and math, the better decisions you’ll make in complex and technical situations.
“What this study shows is that people with high science and math comprehension can think their way to conclusions that are better for them as individuals but are not necessarily better for society.”
According to Kahan, the study suggests the need for science communication strategies that reflect a more sophisticated understanding of cultural values.
“More information can help solve the climate change conflict,” Kahan said, “but that information has to do more than communicate the scientific evidence. It also has to create a climate of deliberations in which no group perceives that accepting any piece of evidence is akin to betrayal of their cultural group.”
In addition to Dan Kahan and Ellen Peters, other study researchers were Maggie Wittlin of the Cultural Cognition Project, Paul Slovic of Decision Research, Lisa Larrimore Ouellette of the Cultural Cognition Project, Donald Braman of George Washington University, and Gregory Mandel of Temple University. The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks, Nature Climate Change, DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE1547.
For years, scientists have struggled to determine why the sun’s atmosphere is more than 300 times hotter than its surface. But a new study has found a possible answer: giant super-tornadoes on the sun that may be injecting heat into the outer layers of our star.
Visualisation of a close-up region in our advanced 3D numerical simulations of a magnetic tornado in the solar atmosphere. The spiral lines represent the velocity field in the tornado vortex. The images contain the observed swirl signature (top, bluish) and the Sun’s surface (bottom, reddish). Image released June 27, 2012. CREDIT: Wedemeyer-Bohm et al./Image produced with VAPOR
While comparing images from the Swedish Solar Telescope with others taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, an international team of scientists noticed bright points on the sun’s surface and atmosphere that corresponded with swirls in the so-called chromospheres, a region that is sandwiched between the two layers. The finding indicates that the solar tornadoes stretched through all three layers of the sun.
The scientists went on to identify 14 solar super-tornadoes occurring within an hour of each other. By using a three dimensional simulation, the team then found that the swirls could play a role in elevating the sun’s outer layer.
A sun ‘super-tornado’ is born
Unlike tornadoes on Earth, which are powered by differences in temperature and humidity, the twisters on the sun are a combination of hot flowing gas and tangled magnetic field lines, ultimately driven by nuclear reactions in the solar core. [How Sun Tornadoes Work (Infographic)]
At the surface, or photosphere, cooled plasma sinks toward the interior like water running down the bathtub drain, creating vortexes that magnetic field lines are forced to follow. The lines stretch upward into the chromosphere, where they continue to spiral.
But while the hot gas at the surface drives the movement of the magnetic field, in the chromosphere it is the field lines that force the hot gas to spiral, creating the swirls that appear similar to tornadoes on Earth.
“The resulting funnel is narrow at the bottom and widens with height in the atmosphere,” lead scientist Sven Wedemeyer-Böhm, of the University of Oslo in Norway, told SPACE.com by email.
Spinning at thousands of miles per hour, the tornadoes vary in size, with diameters ranging from 930 to 3,500 miles (1,500 to 5,550 kilometers). Some of these giant solar twisters extend all the up in to the lower portion of the sun’s upper atmosphere (called the corona, the researchers said.
“Based on the detected events, we estimate that at least 11,000 swirls are present on the sun at all times,” Wedemeyer-Böhm said.
Towering solar twisters
Although the twisters are enormous by Earth’s scale, they are tiny on the surface of the sun. They were first detected in 2008 by Wedemeyer-Böhm and another researcher, but it wasn’t until images of super-tornadoes were compared with those from the corona and photosphere that scientists realized how high the writhing gas extended — or the influence they could have on the sun’s temperature.
The surface temperature of the sun is 9,980 Fahrenheit (5,526 degrees Celsius or about 5,800 Kelvin), while the corona peaks at 3.5 million Fahrenheit (2 million degrees Celsius or nearly 2 million Kelvin), a fact that seems counterintuitive.
Schematic view of the atmospheric layers of the Sun, the extent of simulated magnetic tornado, and the resulting net energy transport. Image released June 27, 2012. CREDIT: Wedemeyer-B�hm/Parts of the image produced with VAPOR
After observing the sun, the international team created computer models in an attempt to determine how much energy — and thus heat — could be effectively transported by the twisters. They concluded that solar tornadoes could help to explain how the outer layer stays so hot, although Wedemeyer-Böhm notes that it is likely only one of a number of different processes powering the temperature of the sun’s corona.
“The magnetic tornadoes offer a potential, alternative and widespread way to transport energy from the solar surface into the corona,” Wedemeyer-Böhm said.
The tornadoes differ from those spotted earlier this year. Those much larger events were formed by twisting solar prominences, and were likely connected to mass ejected from the sun. The smaller tornadoes are more abundant, and make a more significant contribution to the corona’s temperature.
The research was published in today’s (June 27) issue of the journal Nature.
Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR-Bohol) raised an alarm against gathering and eating shellfish from the tide flats of Tagbilaran City bay following a suspected case of red tide. BFAR-Bohol head Cresencio Pahamutang explained the alarm is based on an algal bloom, which is what caused the red coloration in the waters (red tide) that witnesses observed on the sea below Matig-a Lodge along Burgos Street, Tagbilaran City. Pahamutang said BFAR confirmed the reports based on the latest results from the 10 monitoring stations set up at specific points between Dauis Bridge in Junction Mansasa to Maribojoc Bay. According to Pahamutang, a worker at the Matig-a Lodge reported the unusual discoloration in the waters, prompting the BFAR to investigate by going to their monitoring stations. From their tests, Pahamutang shared that from the usual three cells per liter average yield in the collecting stations, they noticed around 1,475 to 1,365 cells per liter. A total ban and alarm against shellfish gathering and eating was issued when the mirco-organisms monitored reach 10,000 units per liter, he explained. With the noticed unusually high concentration of algal micro-organisms in the Tagbilaran Strait, the BFAR said they have coordinated with the Provincial Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Management Council as well as Poblacion 1 Barangay Chairman Arlene Karaan to advise people to stop harvesting shellfish from the mentioned areas. Pahamutang said these algae, also called dinoflagellates have toxins that are usually absorbed by bottom feeding shellfish, making them unfit for human consumption. For fishes from the area, the BFAR chief said as long as the fish is properly prepared before cooking, it may not be affected as much.
Biohazard name:
Red Tide
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Algal bloom happens when an unusually large concentration of aquatic micro-organisms amass in a coastal area, often causing discoloration. When the algae is present in high concentrations, water can be discolored from murky, to purple to pink or red, thus, its common name the red tide.
Status:
Today
Biological Hazard
Canada
Province of Alberta, [Baptiste Lake, Athabasca County]
A blue-green algae that is toxic to people and animals has been discovered in an Alberta lake. Alberta Health Services issued an advisory Saturday, warning people not to drink the water in Baptiste Lake, 167 kilometres north of Edmonton in Athabasca County. AHS said people and pets should not swim or wade in the lake, and should not consume fish from the lake. Avoid contact with blue-green algae along the shoreline, as well, as animals or humans who drink or have skin contact with contaminated water may experience serious illness. Symptoms of contact with the algae include skin irritation, rash, sore throat, sore red eyes, swollen lips, fever, nausea and vomiting or diarrhea, AHS said.
Biohazard name:
Blue-Green (cyanobacteria) Algae bloom
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Symptoms:
Status:
Today
HAZMAT
USA
State of New Jersey, West Deptford [Green Fields Swim Club]
At least four people have been taken to area hospitals sickened by a chlorine release at a Gloucester County swimming pool. Officials say the incident was reported around 3:00pm at the Green Fields Swim Club at 989 Jessup Road in West Deptford, N.J. The injured were transported by ambulances to Underwood and Kennedy Hospitals. There is no word on conditions. he incident is under investigation. And in Philadelphia, five people, including two children hospitalized in a similar incident at a pool in Northeast Philadelphia. The incident was reported around 9:00am in the 8200 block of Bustleton Avenue. Two children and three adults were taken to Hahnemann Hospital. They are listed in stable condition. Officials say initial investigation revealed the incident occurred at a private pool where someone had mixed pool chemicals together causing hazardous material to be released. The investigation continues.
A forensic approach that links changes deep below a volcano to signals at the surface is described by scientists from the University of Bristol in a paper published in Science. The research could ultimately help to predict future volcanic eruptions with greater accuracy.
Using forensic-style chemical analysis, Dr Kate Saunders and colleagues directly linked seismic observations of the deadly 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption to crystal growth within the magma chamber, the large underground pool of liquid rock beneath the volcano.
Over 500 million people live close to volcanoes which may erupt with little or no clear warning, causing widespread devastation, disruption to aviation and even global effects on climate. Many of the world’s volcanoes are monitored for changes such as increases in seismicity or ground deformation.
However, an on-going problem for volcanologists is directly linking observations at the surface to processes occurring underground.
Dr Saunders and colleagues studied zoned crystals, which grow concentrically like tree rings within the magma body. Individual zones have subtly different chemical compositions, reflecting the changes in physical conditions within the magma chamber and thus giving an indication of volcanic processes and the timescales over which they occur.
Chemical analysis of the crystals revealed evidence of pulses of magma into a growing chamber within the volcano. Peaks in crystal growth were found to correlate with increased seismicity and gas emissions in the months prior to the eruption.
Dr Saunders said: “Such a correlation between crystal growth and volcanic seismicity has been long anticipated, but to see such clear evidence of this relationship is remarkable.”
This forensic approach can be applied to other active volcanoes to shed new light upon the nature and timescale of pre-eruptive activity. This will help scientists to evaluate monitoring signals at restless volcanoes and improve forecasting of future eruptions.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
MessageToEagle.com – Beautiful and mysterious structures known as superbubbles result from the stellar winds and supernovae of OB [spectral types O or early-type B] associations.
MessageToEagle.com – Cassini spacecraft has taken great photos of Saturn and its largest moon, Titan.
Sue Ogrocki / AP
Reuters
Sarah Phipps / AP
MessageToEagle.com – Mathematicians have discovered a new way to crinkle up the fabric of space-time, at least in theory.
MessageToEagle.com – Some years ago, back in, 2005, over the slopes of Mount Gongga, China all rocks suddenly turned red.
Microscopic view of Trentepohlia jolithus. Image credit: PLoS One
From Reddit, 
Power lines are down across the Midwest and mid-Atlantic after winds sped up to 90 mph during Friday night’s storm. (Photo courtesy of Twitter user @Smoflake88)
Visualisation of a close-up region in our advanced 3D numerical simulations of a magnetic tornado in the solar atmosphere. The spiral lines represent the velocity field in the tornado vortex. The images contain the observed swirl signature (top, bluish) and the Sun’s surface (bottom, reddish). Image released June 27, 2012. CREDIT: Wedemeyer-Bohm et al./Image produced with VAPOR
Schematic view of the atmospheric layers of the Sun, the extent of simulated magnetic tornado, and the resulting net energy transport. Image released June 27, 2012. CREDIT: Wedemeyer-B�hm/Parts of the image produced with VAPOR