Posts

Proximity to a wind power project does not generally hurt property values, according to a new report that seeks to settle a long-standing concern with the technology. The study, released yesterday by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, assessed nearly 7,500 single-family houses and applied statistical methods and 10 different pricing models to draw its conclusions. “Neither the view of wind energy facilities nor the distance of the home to those facilities was found to have any consistent, measurable, and significant effect on the selling prices of nearby homes,” said Ben Hoen, the report’s author and a consultant to the lab....

By Alister Doyle and Michael SzaboWARSAW (Reuters) - This year is the seventh warmest since records began in 1850 and rising sea levels caused by climate change are aggravating the impact of storms such as Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Wednesday.More greenhouse gases in the atmosphere meant a warmer future, and more extreme weather, was inevitable, WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said in a statement during November 11-22 climate talks among almost 200 nations in Warsaw....

When the clock strikes midnight on December 31, new regulations kick into effect that may help usher in an era of less pervasive flame retardants in our home furnishings. The move caps a years-long campaign to alter regulations inextricably linked with a tobacco industry that sought to elude production of self-extinguishing cigarettes designed to limit couch fires. Deception and intrigue led to a 1970s regulation that prompted the injection of chemicals into home furniture, stemming from a distortion of scientific findings that suggested flame retardants would be more effective at reducing sofa fires than they really are....

On Aug. 5, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) workers inadvertently breached a wall of loose debris that was holding back a pool of mustard-hued wastewater from the abandoned Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado. With a sudden gush, some 3 million gallons (about 11 million liters) of acidic, heavy-metal-laden water flooded into Cement Creek, a tributary of the nearby Animas River. From there, the plume headed downstream into the San Juan River (a major tributary of the Colorado River), headed for New Mexico and, eventually, Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border....

Some experts are heralding the news as a silver lining: Scientists have found snowfall recently escalated in East Antarctica, which could lessen the high amounts of melt seen in West Antarctica that are contributing to rising seas. That prospect is comforting because the vast frozen desert at the underbelly of our world contains about 200 feet of potential sea level rise. But other scientists argue the story line is not so simple....

From Nature magazine Medical researchers are asking whether one of the fluids that doctors regularly administer to severely ill patients may actually be doing more harm than good. The humble drip is one of the most common tools in medicine, used to put a variety of fluids into patients to treat a host of medical conditions. But a paper1 published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) last month has fuelled smouldering doubts about one such type of fluid — hydroxyethyl starch....

Eighty million. That’s the number of germs exchanged in a kiss. Ten to two hundred million. That’s the number of germs that are found on an average cell phone. What is a clean freak to do? How can we possibly combat all of those germs? This question comes from listener Geraldo in Brazil and I think it’s a great one. Does soap really kill 99.9% of germs? How Does Soap Clean?...

Excerpted with permission from An Indomitable Beast: The Remarkable Journey of the Jaguar, by Alan Rabinowitz. Copyright © Island Press, 2014. My earliest memories are filled with pain, embarrassment, and coming to terms with the reality, reinforced by adults, that I was one of life’s broken creatures. Born with a debilitating stutter and placed in public school classes for “special” children, I found it easiest to live inside my own head and withdraw from the world of people as much as a child can....

Scientists working to improve storm intensity forecasting have identified a more accurate means of predicting a hurricane’s strength as it approaches landfall, using sea temperature readings that they say will help forecasters better prepare communities for storm impacts in the face of sea-level rise caused by rising global temperatures. Their research, published yesterday in Nature Communications, helped identify why 2011’s Hurricane Irene and 10 other summer hurricanes in the Mid-Atlantic failed to intensify as predicted....

Indonesia’s losses of virgin forests totaled 60,000 sq kms (23,000 sq miles) - an area almost as big as Ireland - from 2000-12, partly to make way for palm oil plantations and other farms, a study said. And the pace of losses has increased. Deforestation in Indonesia in 2012 alone was 8,400 sq kms (3,200 sq miles) versus 4,600 sq kms (1,800 sq miles) in Brazil, which has managed to reduce losses in recent years, it said....

The coronavirus that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and staggered the world’s economy is just about 88 nanometers in diameter—138 nm if you count its spikes. In this issue of Scientific American, we show what scientists have learned so far about the structure and function of the evil genius pathogen SARS-CoV-2. Molecular virologist Britt Glaunsinger worked with artist Veronica Falconieri Hays, senior editor Mark Fischetti and senior graphics editor Jen Christiansen to create a detailed 3-D model of the virus and illustrations showing how it invades lung cells and torments the immune system....

Humanity has just been given a front-row seat to a Mars landing, thanks to a high-resolution, full-colour video that NASA released of its Perseverance rover descending into Jezero Crater on 18 February. The video shows the drama of the spacecraft’s final descent, from the 21.5-metre-wide parachute billowing overhead to slow it down, to the dusty orange landscape of Jezero gently rocking below as Perseverance drifted downwards, to the final moments when the rover’s six corrugated wheels touched down on a flat, rock-studded surface....

By Naomi Tajitsu TOKYO (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co <7201.T> said on Tuesday it was developing fuel cell vehicle (FCV) technology using ethanol as a hydrogen source in what would be an industry first, and planned to commercialize its system in 2020 as part of efforts to develop cleaner cars. The Japanese company said using ethanol, produced from crops including sugar cane and corn, to generate hydrogen-based electricity inside vehicles would be cheaper than fuel cell technology developed separately by rivals Toyota Motor Corp <7203....

On a summer day in 1968 Professor Julian Stanley met a brilliant but bored 12-year-old named Joseph Bates. The Baltimore student was so far ahead of his classmates in mathematics that his parents had arranged for him to take a computer science course at Johns Hopkins University, where Stanley taught. Even that wasn’t enough. Having leap-frogged ahead of the adults in the class, the child kept himself busy by teaching the FORTRAN programming language to graduate students....

Ever since heartthrob television doctor Mark Sloan had a sexual mishap on last night’s episode of TV hit show Grey’s Anatomy, bloggers around the globe have been buzzing about a bizarre and horrifying condition called “broken penis syndrome”. For those who didn’t catch last night’s hot and steamy love scene between Sloan (played by actor Eric Dane) and “intern” Lexie Grey (Chyler Leigh), be advised: it ended painfully—very painfully. At least for Sloan, who suffered a severe injury to his manhood, which prompted a slew of rumors among hospital staff about which woman “broke Sloan’s penis,” according to ABC’s online recap of the episode....

Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are shrinking three times faster than they were in the 1990s, and their contribution to global sea level rise is growing, according to a new study by many of the world’s top ice experts. Melting of the two massive polar ice sheets raised the world’s oceans 11.1 millimeters between 1992 and 2011, or just under half an inch, accounting for about one-fifth of the total sea level rise during that period....

At more than twice the size of the Titanic, the Costa Concordia was the largest passenger vessel ever to sink when it capsized off Italy’s northwest coast on January 13. So far, Italian authorities say of the more than 4,200 passengers and crew on board, at least 18 are confirmed dead and 14 unaccounted for, and the insurance costs may reach $1 billion, according to Moody’s Investors Service. Now salvage companies around the world are gearing up for the mammoth task of recovering the ship, a challenge made all the more complicated by its precarious spot....

If there is a mathematician eagerly waiting for the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva to start up next year, it is Alain Connes of the Collge de France in Paris. Like many physicists, Connes hopes that the Higgs particle will show up in detectors. The Higgs is the still missing crowning piece of the so-called Standard Model–the theoretical framework that describes subatomic particles and their interactions. For Connes, the discovery of the Higgs, which supposedly endows the other particles with mass, is crucial: its existence, and even its mass, emerges from the arcane equations of a new form of mathematics called noncommutative geometry, of which he is the chief inventor....

Our intuition, going back forever, is that to move, say, a rock, one has to touch that rock, or touch a stick that touches the rock, or give an order that travels via vibrations through the air to the ear of a man with a stick that can then push the rock—or some such sequence. This intuition, more generally, is that things can only directly affect other things that are right next to them....

Responding to an April mandate from a federal district court that would make the emergency contraception drug Plan B available without a prescription to all women regardless of age, the Obama administration reduced current age restrictions on the pill from 17 to 15. That political compromise, despite being the U.S.’s most progressive legislation on emergency contraception to date, continues a historical pattern of ignoring the very studies U.S. administrations have ordered to evaluate the safety of the drug and the societal effects of increased access to emergency contraception....