59914939
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Lasrick writes:
First Lady Michelle Obama delivers a wonderful Mother's Day address in which she discusses the horrible kidnapping of over 200 girls in Nigeria. The girls were kidnapped as part of an effort to keep them from being educated.
59886821
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Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes:
Time Magazine reports that Wyoming, the nation's top coal-producing state, has become the first state to reject new K-12 science standards proposed by national education groups mainly because of global warming components. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are a set of science standards developed by leading scientists and science educators from 26 states and built on a framework developed by the National Academy of Sciences. The Wyoming science standards revision committee made up entirely of Wyoming educators unanimously recommended adoption of these standards to the state Board of Education not once but twice and twelve states have already adopted the standards since they were released in April 2013. But opponents argue the standards incorrectly assert that man-made emissions are the main cause of global warming and shouldn’t be taught in a state that ranks first among all states in coal production, fifth in natural gas production and eighth in crude oil production deriving much of its school funding from the energy industry. Amy Edmonds, of the Wyoming Liberty Group, says teaching “one view of what is not settled science about global warming” is just one of a number of problems with the standards. “I think Wyoming can do far better." Wyoming Governor Matt Mead has called federal efforts to curtail greenhouse emissions a “war on coal” and has said that he’s skeptical about man-made climate change.
Supporters of the NGSS say science standards for Wyoming schools haven't been updated since 2003 and are six years overdue. "If you want the best science education for your children and grandchildren and you don’t want any group to speak for you, then make yourselves heard loud and clear," says Cate Cabot. "Otherwise you will watch the best interests of Wyoming students get washed away in the hysteria of a small anti-science minority driven by a national right wing group – and political manipulation."
59880599
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Lasrick writes:
Joseph Stromberg at Vox makes a good case for changing traffic rules for bicyclists so that the 'Idaho stop' is legal. The Idaho stop allows cyclists to treat stop signs as yields and red lights as stop signs, and has created a safer ride for both cyclists and pedestrians. Oregon was considering a similar law in 2009, and they made a nice video illustrating the Idaho Stop that is embedded in this article.
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concertina226 writes:
Scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US have found a way to neutralise chemical weapons like Sarin nerve gas by weaving carbon nanotubes into clothing.
Nanotubes are special molecules that resemble grey cylinders. When these cylinders are combined together with a copper-based catalyst, they have the ability to break apart the key chemical bond in a class of nerve agents, rendering them less harmful.
Classified as weapons of mass destruction, organophosphates can even be re-released from clothing, if it is not properly decontaminated, so to protect themselves, the researchers performed their experiments using a "mimic molecule" which has a chemical bond identical to that of organophosphates.
59826967
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Lasrick writes:
Excellent examination of building push-back against Israel due to their hyper-aggressive spying on the US. A combination of funny and horrifying stories, and of course a look at how the "Israel lobby" in Washington tries to prevent any discussion of the issue.
59826725
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tcd004 writes:
Few sciences are more romantic than taxonomy. Imagine Darwin, perched over a nest of newly-discovered birds in the Galapagos, sketching away with a charcoal in his immortal journals. Yet Taxonomy is a dying science. DNA barcoding, which can identify species from tiny fragments of organic material, and other genetic sciences are pulling students away from the classical studies of anatomy and species classifications. As the biodiversity crisis wipes undiscovered species off the planet, so to go the scientists who count them.
59826639
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Lasrick writes:
The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is a year old; the same month is was founded, the UN's special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions called for a moratorium on the development and deployment of autonomous lethal weapons while a special commission considered the issue. The campaign is succeeding at bringing attention to the issue, but it's possible that it's too late, and if governments don't come to a common understanding of what the problems and solutions are, the movement is doomed. As this article points out, one of the most contentious issues is the question of what constitutes an autonomous weapons system: 'Setting the threshold of autonomy is going to involve significant debate, because machine decision-making exists on a continuum.' Another, equally important issue of course is whether a ban is realistic.
59781925
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mdsolar writes:
"Stanford University announced Tuesday that it would divest its $18.7 billion endowment of stock in coal-mining companies, becoming the first major university to lend support to a nationwide campaign to purge endowments and pension funds of fossil fuel investments.
The university said it acted in accordance with internal guidelines that allow its trustees to consider whether “corporate policies or practices create substantial social injury” when choosing investments. Coal’s status as a major source of carbon pollution linked to climate change persuaded the trustees to remove companies “whose principal business is coal” from their investment portfolio, the university said.
Stanford’s associate vice president for communications, Lisa Lapin, said the decision covers about 100 companies worldwide that derive the majority of their revenue from coal extraction. Not all of those companies are in the university’s investment portfolio, whose structure is private, she said. Over all, the university’s coal holdings are a small fraction of its endowment.
“But a small percentage is still a substantial amount of money,” she added.
The trustees’ decision carries more symbolic than financial weight, but it is a major victory for a rapidly growing student-led divestment movement that is now active at roughly 300 universities."
59765051
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Lasrick writes:
The Obama administration has approved an upgrade to the B61 nuclear bomb that will become a guided standoff nuclear bomb. If the upgrade—the 12th modification of the original B61 design—is pursued as planned, the US Air Force will obtain the low-yield, precision-guided nuclear weapon it first sought in the 1990s, despite concerns that it could increase the likelihood of use. The weapon’s overall price tag is expected to exceed $10 billion, with each B61-12 estimated to cost more than the value of its weight in gold.
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randomErr writes:
On Friday, Yosemite National Park in California turned heads when it announced that drones, the unmanned aircraft increasingly making their way into private hands, aren't welcome in the park, famous for its picturesque valley of towering granite cliffs, waterfalls and Giant Sequoia groves. Apparently using drones to capture experiences at the park, on the western edge of the Sierra Nevada mountains, is becoming a trend.
59755601
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__aajbyc7391 writes:
Raytheon is switching its UAV control system from Solaris to Linux for U.S. military drones, starting with a Northrop Grumman MQ-8C Fire Scout helicopter. Earlier this month Raytheon entered into a $15.8 million contract with the U.S. Navy to upgrade Raytheon’s control systems for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), according to a May 2 Avionics Intelligence report. The overhaul is designed to implement more modern controls to help ground-based personnel control UAVs. Raytheon’s tuxified version of its Vertical Takeoff and Landing Unmanned Air Vehicle (VTUAV) Tactical Control System (TCS) will also implement universal UAV control qualities. As a result the TCS can be used in in all U.S. Navy, Air Force, Army, and Marine Corps UAVs that weigh at least 20 pounds. By providing an open standard, the common Linux-based platform is expected to reduce costs by limiting the types of UAV control systems that need to be built and maintained for each craft.
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Lasrick writes:
This Harvard Gazette article is based on two press releases from the Wyss Institute, but it's a good summary of a new bioplastic developed by the Institute that is made from chitin, the main ingredient in the hardy shells of crustaceans and 'the second most abundant organic material on earth.' Bags made from this new bioplastic break down in a matter of weeks, and even fertilizes the soil! Good read.
59722849
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Lasrick writes:
With the news that a multinational consortium is the halfway point in constructing a huge stainless steel hangar that will sit over the ruined site of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, Dan Drollette looks in the archives of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and compares notes on the sarcophagus that was built 25 years ago, and the one that is being built now. 'No one really knows what went into the “concrete cube;” even the amount of concrete claimed to have been used is suspect, as it would form a volume larger than the sarcophagus, wrote nuclear engineer and author Alexander R. Sich in his 11-page article, “Truth was an early casualty.”' Let's hope this new sarcophagus lasts longer.
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Lasrick writes:
Princeton sociologist Janet Vertesi writes about her attempt at hiding her pregnancy from “the bots, trackers, cookies and other data sniffers online that feed the databases that companies use for targeted advertising.” Big data still found her, even though she steered clear of social media, avoided baby-related credit card purchases, and downloaded Tor to browse the Internet privately.
59622151
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Lasrick writes:
Lucien Crowder is fed up with the notion that solutions for climate change would be easier to enact if only the public (especially the American public) understood the science better. Crowder looks to nuclear disarmament advocates as a model, as the move to reduce nuclear weapons has seen comparatively greater success even without public awareness and understanding: 'Indeed, in the nuclear and climate realms, desirable policy often seems to flow less from public engagement than from public obliviousness. Disarmament advocates, no matter how they try, cannot tempt most ordinary people into caring about nuclear weapons—yet stockpiles of weapons steadily, if still too slowly, decrease. Climate advocacy provokes greater passion, but passion often manifests itself as outraged opposition to climate action, and atmospheric carbon has reached levels unseen since before human beings evolved.'
