Miscellaneous Articles
Wild Sharks, Redfish Harbor Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria
ScienceDaily (June 18, 2010) - Researchers have found antibiotic-resistant bacteria in seven species of sharks and redfish captured in waters off Belize, Florida, Louisiana and Massachusetts. Most of these wild, free-swimming fish harbored several drug-resistant bacterial strains.
The study, published in the Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine, found antibiotic-resistant bacteria in every fish species sampled.
The researchers also found multidrug-resistant bacteria in fish at nearly all of the study sites, said Mark Mitchell, a professor of veterinary clinical medicine at the University of Illinois and a senior author of the paper.
"Ultimately the idea of this study was to see if there were organisms out there that had exposures or resistance patterns to antibiotics that we might not expect," Mitchell said. "We found that there was resistance to antibiotics that these fish shouldn't be exposed to."
Read More...
Battle of the Bugs Leaves Humans as Collateral Damage
ScienceDaily (June 21, 2010) — It's a tragedy of war that innocent bystanders often get caught in the crossfire. But now scientists at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Oxford have shown how a battle for survival at a microscopic level could leave humans as the unlikely victims.
In work funded by the US Public Health Service and the Wellcome Trust, the researchers have found a possible explanation for why some bacteria turn nasty, even at great risk to their own survival.
The body is home to a wide range of bacteria which in the vast majority of cases exist quietly, causing no harm. Sometimes, a bacterium will evolve properties which are potentially deadly to its human host. But evolution comes at a cost and this presents a paradox: why should it harm its host when this could result in the demise of the bacteria themselves?
"For many microbes, living in harmony with their host is the best option, so why do some suddenly turn nasty?" asks Dr Sam Brown, a Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellow at the University of Oxford. "Sometimes the answer is obvious -- for example, the cold virus makes its host sneeze, helping it spread wider. But for other bacteria and viruses, which do not normally cause disease, the reason isn't at all clear."
Read More...
Organic Pesticides Not Always 'Greener' Choice, Study Finds
ScienceDaily (June 23, 2010) - Consumers shouldn't assume that, because a product is organic, it's also environmentally friendly.
A new University of Guelph study reveals some organic pesticides can have a higher environmental impact than conventional pesticides because the organic product may require larger doses.
Environmental sciences professor Rebecca Hallett and PhD candidate Christine Bahlai compared the effectiveness and environmental impact of organic pesticides to those of conventional and novel reduced-risk synthetic products on soybean crops.
"The consumer demand for organic products is increasing partly because of a concern for the environment," said Hallett. "But it's too simplistic to say that because it's organic it's better for the environment. Organic growers are permitted to use pesticides that are of natural origin and in some cases these organic pesticides can have higher environmental impacts than synthetic pesticides often because they have to be used in large doses."
Read More...
BP Is Pursuing Alaska Drilling Some Call Risky
The future of BP's offshore oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico has been thrown into doubt by the recent drilling disaster and court wrangling over a moratorium.
But about three miles off the coast of Alaska, BP is moving ahead with a controversial and potentially record-setting project to drill two miles under the sea and then six to eight miles horizontally to reach what is believed to be a 100-million-barrel reservoir of oil under federal waters.
All other new projects in the Arctic have been halted by the Obama administration's moratorium on offshore drilling, including more traditional projects like Shell Oil's plans to drill three wells in the Chukchi Sea and two in the Beaufort.
But BP's project, called Liberty, has been exempted as regulators have granted it status as an "onshore" project even though it is about three miles off the coast in the Beaufort Sea. The reason: it sits on an artificial island — a 31-acre pile of gravel in about 22 feet of water — built by BP.
Read More...
This Just In: Fox Is Still a Terrible Source for News
Back in October, I wrote a post called Not Necessarily the News. In it, I documented how, irrespective of whether or not the Fox News Channel has a "conservative point of view" (as its devotees like to say), it is - objectivelty - a failure as a news organization. Data from a 2003 study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), for instance, as well as 2007 research conducted by the Pew Research Center and a 2009 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, all clearly demonstrated that Fox News viewers are among the worst-informed people in the country.
Read More...
Newspapers Retract 'Climategate' Claims, but Damage Still Done
I am often critical of the near-death Newsweek — see Why has a Newsweek economics editor, Stefan Theil, written "basically a condensed version of the climate denier viewpoint"?
But they have a great science editor (see Why climate change is "even worse than we feared"). And Sharon Begley has written another good piece:
A lie can get halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on, as Mark Twain said (or "before the truth gets a chance to put its pants on," in Winston Churchill's version), and nowhere has that been more true than in "climategate." In that highly orchestrated, manufactured scandal, e-mails hacked from computers at the University of East Anglia's climate-research group were spread around the Web by activists who deny that human activity is altering the world's climate in a dangerous way, and spun so as to suggest that the scientists had been lying, cheating, and generally cooking the books.
But not only did British investigators clear the East Anglia scientist at the center of it all, Phil Jones, of scientific impropriety and dishonesty in April, an investigation at Penn State cleared PSU climatologist Michael Mann of "falsifying or suppressing data, intending to delete or conceal e-mails and information, and misusing privileged or confidential information" in February.
Read More...
Tax 'Extenders' Bill Blocked Again in Senate
Senate Republicans--and one Democrat--again have blocked a package of extensions of tax incentives, including some that construction industry groups support. Democrats' failure to win a procedural vote on June 24 sends the drafters of the bill back to the drawing board.
The 57-41 vote to cut off debate on the tax "extenders" bill was three votes short of the 60 that Democrats needed. Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska joined 40 Republicans who voted "no."
It is the third time that an extenders package has been sidetracked on the Senate floor in recent weeks. The latest vote left the fate of the measure up in the air.
In response to GOP-led criticism that the measure was too costly, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the tax bill's main architect, said on the chamber floor that he had reduced the price tag repeatedly, from $200 billion about two months ago, to less than $110 billion.
Baucus also said that the latest version of the bill was "more than two-thirds paid for," through a collection of tax increases that Democrats termed "loophole-closers." Democrats said the only provision that wasn't offset was an extension of unemployment benefits.
Read More...
Alternatives to Antibiotics in Animals: Looking to Africa for Answers
A recent article and editorial in the New York Times addressed the dire consequences of antibiotic overuse in farm animals on humans, and what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is planning to do about it.
Previously introduced legislation, most notably the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2009, have attempted to regulate antibiotic use in the agricultural industry. This week, the FDA has finally issued a "draft guidance" on the use of drugs in agriculture, especially antibiotics that have significance in treating human infections. The use of such drugs, the agency says, should be "limited to treating or controlling infectious disease in animals or to prevent infections before an outbreak occurs."
Industry representatives such as the National Pork Producers Council continue to voice their opposition, citing the high costs they project from having to review "previously approved animal health products." These same voices have been supporting the spread of the factory-farming model in the United States, building the perception that it is necessary to sub-therapeutically dose animals with antibiotics to keep them disease-free or to make them produce more meat or milk.
Read More...
"Torture" study reveals appalling cowardice of America's newspapers
On the one hand, waterboarding is torture.
On the other hand....
I'm sorry -- there is no other hand. Waterboarding is torture, period. It's been that way for decades -- it was torture when we went after Japanese war criminals who used the ancient and inhumane interrogation tactic, it was torture when Pol Pot and some of the worst dictators known to mankind used it against their own people, and it was torture to the U.S. military which once punished soldiers who adopted the grim practice.
And waterboarding was described as "torture," almost without fail, in America's newspapers.
Until 2004, after the arrival of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their criminal notions of "enhanced interrogations." For four years -- in what would have to be the bizarro-world version of "speaking truth to power," waterboarding was almost never torture on U.S. newsprint. Then waterboarding-as-torture nearly made a mild comeback in journo-world, until perpetrators like Cheney and Inquirer op-ed columnist John Yoo began the big pushback, when American newspapers bravely turned their tails and fled.
The sordid history is spelled out in a significant new report by the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard (you can read it as a PDF file here). The report notes:
Read More...
Media ran with now-retracted attack on IPCC in their assault on global warming science
Numerous media outlets seized on a dubious January London Sunday Times report which claimed that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) 2007 statement on Amazon rain forests was "unsubstantiated" and without scientific basis in order to attack the IPCC's credibility and global warming science in general. However, The Sunday Times has now retracted that claim, noting, "In fact, the IPCC's Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence." Will these media outlets follow suit?
Media Matters has written a terrific post identifying the media outlets that need to issue retractions on the shameful and bogus Amazon story smearing IPCC. It is reposted below:
Read More...
UK backing loans for 'risky' offshore oil drilling in Brazil
Documents show the UK government ignored risks in subsidising oil extraction from nearly 2,000m deep in Atlantic waters
The British government is subsidising one of the world's largest and riskiest oil-drilling projects in the Atlantic Ocean and would be liable for tens of millions of pounds if a major accident took place.
Documents seen by the Guardian show that UK trade ministers underwrote loans taken out by the Brazilian state-run energy company Petrobras in 2005 in order that Rolls Royce and other companies could contribute to the building of the giant P-52 platform.
The platform is now operating 125km off the coast of Brazil in 1,798 metres (5,900 feet) of water - deeper than BP's Deepwater rig that exploded in April and led to the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
But the 14-page environment report prepared by the UK's Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD) and obtained under freedom of information rules by watchdog group Corner House, makes no mention of blowouts or the equipment needed to prevent them. Ministers have edited out all ECDG's comments assessing the risks involved in deep-sea drilling in the Atlantic.
The oil and gas reservoirs of the Campos basin are considered some of the most hazardous in the world to access, pushing offshore technology to the limit. The P-52 rig replaced one that exploded and sank due to human error in 2001, killing 11 people.
Read More...
BP Texas Refinery Had Huge Toxic Release Just Before Gulf Blowout
TEXAS CITY, TEXAS -- Two weeks before the blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the huge, trouble-plagued BP refinery [1] in this coastal town spewed tens of thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals into the skies.
The release from the BP facility here began April 6 and lasted 40 days [2]. It stemmed from the company's decision to keep producing and selling gasoline while it attempted repairs on a key piece of equipment, according to BP officials and Texas regulators.
BP says it failed to detect the extent of the emissions for several weeks. It discovered the scope of the problem only after analyzing data from a monitor that measures emissions from a flare 300 feet above the ground that was supposed to incinerate the toxic chemicals.
Read More...