60697555
submission
Lasrick writes:
This is a heartbreaking read that profiles Amor Masovic, who works for the Bosnian government's Missing Persons Institute. Masovic traverses the "Valley of Death," the Drina River basin, looking for the mass graves of people (mostly Muslim men) killed during the genocide of the Bosnian war: 'For Masovic, the massacre in Srebrenica presents a special professional challenge. Only about a thousand of those fleeing were killed outright. The other 7,000 were captured and taken to various killing fields for execution, their bodies dumped into mass graves. Shortly afterward, however, Serb commanders ordered the original graves dug up and the remains moved to a series of smaller mass graves along the Drina River basin — the so-called Valley of Death — that they hoped would never be found. “This has made Srebrenica our greatest challenge,” Masovic said.'
60663517
submission
mspohr writes:
Can bottom-up cap and trade work?
California has funded a $3.2 million system to burn methane from dairy cows in Wisconsin.
It's all part of California's "cap and trade" effort to reduce climate change.
"California’s program is the latest incarnation of an increasingly popular — and much debated — mechanism that has emerged as one of the primary weapons against global warming. From China to Norway, Kazakhstan to the Northeastern United States, governments are requiring industries to buy permits allowing them to emit set levels of greenhouse gases. Under these plans, the allowable levels of pollution are steadily reduced and the cost of permits rises, creating an economic incentive for companies to cut emissions."
“We might be witnessing the birth of a new system, without quite realizing it,” said Glen P. Peters, a climate researcher at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo. “When you think of all these bottom-up initiatives around the world, maybe we are living through the transformation right now.”
"Experts who support cap and trade contend that a market mechanism can reach more deeply into the economy than any other approach, changing the behavior even of people and companies that might not necessarily care about global warming."
60621213
submission
Lasrick writes:
This is pretty significant: President Obama will use his executive authority to cut carbon emissions from the nation’s coal-fired power plants by up to 20 percent, according to people familiar with his plans, and will force industry to pay for the pollution it creates through cap-and-trade programs across the country.
60620961
submission
wiredmikey writes:
Iranian threat actors, using more than a dozen fake personas on popular social networking sites, have been running a wide-spanning cyber espionage operation since 2011, according to a new report. The recently uncovered activity, which iSIGHT Partners calls NEWSCASTER, was a “brazen, complex multi-year cyber-espionage that used a low-tech approach to avoid traditional security defenses–exploiting social media and people who are often the ‘weakest link’ in the security chain.”
Using the fake personas, including at least two (falsified) legitimate identities from leading news organizations, and young, attractive women, the attackers were supported by a fictitious news organization and were successful in connecting or victimizing over 2,000 individuals.
Working undetected since 2011, targets included senior U.S. military and diplomatic personnel, congressional personnel, Washington D.C. area journalists, U.S. think tanks, defense contractors in the U.S. and Israel. “Largely this campaign was about credential harvesting and recon,” Stephen Ward of iSIGHT Partners, told SecurityWeek.
The report from iSIGHT Partners, which has not been publicly released, comes roughly two weeks after a report from FireEye, which suggested that Iranian attackers’ methodologies have “grown more consistent with other advanced persistent threat (APT) actors in and around Iran" following cyber attacks against Iran in the late 2000s.
60545195
submission
Lasrick writes:
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists editor John Mecklin looks to past issues of the Bulletin to explain what the new Godzilla movie does not: Why Godzilla matters. Links to articles include a fascinating excerpt from the book Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950, by chief curator of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Kerry Brougher (who is now director of the new Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences' Museum of Motion Pictures). The movie did over $93 million in opening weekend revenue.
60279321
submission
Lasrick writes:
Terrific story about a dedicated chemistry professor at the University of Texas, Austin, who noticed that the failure rate in his chemistry classes matched a nationwide rate of who graduates from college and who drops out. The program he started to help these students, the Texas Interdisciplinary Plan, or TIP, is making a huge difference.
60240125
submission
mdsolar writes:
"During the 1970s and 1980s, when many nuclear reactors were first built, most operators estimated that seas would rise at a slow, constant rate. That is, if the oceans rose a fraction of an inch one year, they could be expected to rise by the same amount the next year and every year in the future.
But the seas are now rising much faster than they did in the past, largely due to climate change, which accelerates thermal expansion and melts glaciers and ice caps. Sea levels rose an average of 8 inches between 1880 and 2009, or about 0.06 inches per year. But in the last 20 years, sea levels have risen an average of 0.13 inches per year — about twice as fast.
And it's only getting worse. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has laid out four different projections for estimated sea level rise by 2100. Even the agency's best-case scenario assumes that sea levels will rise at least 8.4 inches by the end of this century. NOAA's worst-case scenario, meanwhile, predicts that the oceans will rise nearly 7 feet in the next 86 years.
But most nuclear power facilities were built well before scientists understood just how high sea levels might rise in the future. And for power plants, the most serious threat is likely to come from surges during storms. Higher sea levels mean that flooding will travel farther inland, creating potential hazards in areas that may have previously been considered safe. During Superstorm Sandy, for example, flooding threatened the water intake systems at the Oyster Creek and Salem nuclear power plants in New Jersey. As a safety precaution, both plants were powered down. But even when a plant is not operating, the spent fuel stored on-site, typically uranium, will continue to emit heat and must be cooled using equipment that relies on the plant's own power. Flooding can cause a loss of power, and in serious conditions it can damage backup generators. Without a cooling system, reactors can overheat and damage the facility to the point of releasing radioactive material."
60205247
submission
Rambo Tribble writes:
The cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington was supposed to be entering its final stages by now. The reality is far from that. The cleanup was to be managed under the 'Tri-Party Agreement', signed on May 15, 1989, which was supposed to facilitate cooperation between the agencies involved. Today, underfunded and overwhelmed by technical problems, the effort is decades behind schedule. Adding to the frustrations for stakeholders and watchdogs is a bureaucratic slipperiness on the part of the Federal Department of Energy. As one watchdog put it, 'We are constantly frustrated by how easily the Department of Energy slips out of agreements in the Tri-Party Agreement.'
60007611
submission
Lasrick writes:
Laura Kahn examines why efforts to combat outbreaks of diseases like MERS, SARS, ebola and other diseases will never be successful until world health organizations pay attention to animal health: ‘The most important shared characteristic of ailments like MERS, SARS, Ebola, avian influenza, West Nile virus, and even diseases of bioterrorism like anthrax, though, is the fact that they are zoonotic: That is, they originate in animals and then spread to humans.’ Kahn goes on to document several instances in which disease outbreaks in humans came on the heels of similar outbreaks in nearby animal communities: camels (MERS), and domestic livestock (anthrax), are two examples. The lack of animal health surveillance in many countries should come as no surprise, however, as surveillance and reporting of disease outbreaks in humans is also lacking, particularly in Africa. The most recent outbreak of Ebola in Guinea is a prime example: it took authorities at least 3 months to report the outbreak to the World Health Organization.
60006089
submission
schwit1 writes:
Moscow is banning Washington from using Russian-made rocket engines, which the US has used to deliver its military satellites into orbit, said Russia’s Deputy PM, Dmitry Rogozin, who is in charge of space and defense industries.
According to Rogozin, Russia is also halting the operation of all American GPS stations on its territory from June 1.
Russia currently hosts 11 ground-based GPS stations, the Deputy PM said.
The move comes after the US refused to place a signal correction station for Russia’s own space-based satellite navigation system, GLONASS, on American territory, he explained.
This is a major problem for the US military because (as Bloomberg reports),
The Pentagon has no “great solution” to reduce its dependence on a Russian-made engine that powers the rocket used to launch U.S. military satellites, the Defense Department’s top weapons buyer said.
“We don’t have a great solution,” Frank Kendall, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, said yesterday after testifying before a Senate committee. “We haven’t made any decisions yet.”
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered the Air Force to review its reliance on the rocket engine after tensions over Russia’s takeover of Ukraine’s Crimea region prompted questions from lawmakers about that long-time supply connection.
United Launch Alliance LLC, a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co., uses the Russian-made RD-180 engine on Atlas V rockets.
59958687
submission
Lasrick writes:
Bob Alvarez has a terrific article on the history and realities of thorium as an energy fuel: For 50 years the US has tried to develop thorium as an energy source for nuclear reactors, and that effort has mostly failed. Besides the extraordinary costs involved, In the process of pursuing thorium-based reactors a fair amount of uranium 233 has been created, and 96 kilograms of the stuff (enough to fuel 12 nuclear weapons) is now missing from the US national inventory. On top of that, the federal government is attempting to force Nevada into accepting a bunch of the uranium 233, as is, for disposal in a landfill (the Nevada Nuclear Security Site). 'Because such disposal would violate the agency’s formal safeguards and radioactive waste disposal requirements, the Energy Department changed those rules, which it can do without public notification or comment. Never before has the agency or its predecessors taken steps to deliberately dump a large amount of highly concentrated fissile material in a landfill, an action that violates international standards and norms.'
59945841
submission
concertina226 writes:
The United Nations will debate the use of killer robots for the first time at the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) this week, but human rights activists are calling for the robots to be banned.
Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic have published a new report entitled "Shaking the Foundations: The Human Rights Implications of Killer Robots", which calls for killer robots to be banned to prevent a potential arms race between countries.
Killer robots, or fully autonomous weapons, do not yet exist but would be the next step after remote-controlled armed drones used by the US military today. Fully autonomous weapons would have the ability to identify and fire on targets without human intervention, putting compliance with international humanitarian laws in doubt.
Among the problems with killer robots highlighted in the report is the risk of criminal liability for a military officer, programmer or weapons manufacturer who created or used an autonomous weapon with intent to kill.
If a robot killed arbitrarily, it would be difficult to hold anyone accountable.
59944729
submission
Mr D from 63 writes:
On Saturday, May 10, 2014, at 2 p.m. local time (10 p.m. Friday EDT), the hybrid remotely operated vehicle Nereus was confirmed lost at 9,990 meters (6.2 miles) depth in the Kermadec Trench northeast of New Zealand. The unmanned vehicle was working as part of a mission to explore the ocean’s hadal region from 6,000 to nearly 11,000 meters deep. Scientists say a portion of it likely imploded under pressure as great as 16,000 pounds per square inch.
59920165
submission
walterbyrd writes:
For those that don't know about this, what happens is: bees, sometimes by the millions, fly off from their hives, and never come back. Such behavior has been unheard of until fairly recently. This starting happening soon after the widespread use of neonicotinoids.
This might be consistent with the way neonicotinoids work. Neonicotinoids do not directly kill the insects. Rather, neonicotinoids affect the nervous system of the insects, and the insect dies because it cannot take care of itself. It has been long theorized that bees with damaged nervous systems cannot navigate back to their hives.
Monsanto has been denying that their products have anything to do this.
59919555
submission
samzenpus writes:
Last week you had the chance to ask biologist Stewart Brand about his books, his life, and his Revive & Restore project, which aims to to bring back extinct species and provide genetic rescue for those that are endangered. Below you'll find his answers to your questions.