Miscellaneous Articles

Obama: Energy investments to create 700,000 jobs
Washington -- President Barack Obama said he expects the government's investments in energy programs to create 700,000 jobs over the next few years.
Today, Obama toured Smith Electric Vehicles, a producer of commercial delivery trucks in Kansas City, Mo., that operates out of a shuttered jet engine plant. The company -- which just hired its 50th worker -- is among those that received $2.4 billion in cash grants to boost electric vehicle and battery research last August.
"One of those decisions was to provide critical funding to promising, innovative businesses like Smith Electric. And because we did, there is a thriving enterprise here instead of an empty, darkened warehouse," Obama said. "Because of the grant that went to this company, we can hear the sounds of machines humming and people doing their jobs instead of the quiet of an empty building where the workers were laid off long ago."
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Nuclear growth puts region at risk
Port Penn resident Julie L. Harrington is surrounded by nuclear reactors. So is Dae Y. Kwak in Hockessin and Carl Cook in Middletown. In fact, no region in America has so many people living within the overlapping, 50-mile planning areas of so many nuclear power reactors as northern Delaware and nearby areas in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland, according to a review of nuclear sites and Census Bureau statistics by The News Journal.
Nine reactors stand 40 miles or less from Delaware's border. Three are close enough to require evacuation planning, emergency sirens and medical stockpiles. Six others include parts of Delaware in the 50-mile radius zones where food, farms and water supplies could be contaminated if the most serious accidents occur.
Now, PSEG Nuclear is seeking approval to build a fourth, and possibly fifth, reactor at the Salem-Hope Creek station across the Delaware River from Odessa. Another reactor review is further along for Calvert Cliffs on the Chesapeake Bay less than 50 miles from Seaford and Laurel. Nationally, 17 nuclear reactor sites and 24 reactors are under consideration, mostly east of the Mississippi River.
In Delaware, some environmental groups actively oppose nuclear expansion, but opinions vary even in neighborhoods closest to Salem, with the oil industry's Gulf Coast trauma providing new reasons to welcome alternative energy sources.
"Now we see BP's business in the Gulf of Mexico and who knows what else is out there waiting to happen," said Roger A. Martin, a historian, retired schoolteacher and former state senator who has an almost unbroken view of Salem's hulking cooling tower from his porch north of Odessa.
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College spending for instruction falling
WASHINGTON, July 9 (UPI) -- The rate of spending for non-instructional purposes at U.S. colleges and universities is rising, a study of college costs indicates.
The Delta Cost Project, a non-profit group that advocates cost controls to keep college affordable, studied trends in revenues and spending from 1998 through 2008 by all types of U.S. higher education institutions, including tony private schools, public universities and community colleges, The New York Times reported Friday.
The United States enjoys the reputation of having the world's wealthiest post-secondary education system, spending an average of about $19,000 per student compared with an average of $8,400 in other developed countries, said the report, "Trends in College Spending 1998-2008."
The trend toward increased spending on non-academic areas crossed the higher education spectrum, the report indicated, with public, private and community colleges increasing expenditures more for student services than for instruction. Student services can include spending on career counseling, financial aid offices, intramural athletics and student centers.
Spending on instruction increased 22 percent over the decade at private research universities, while student services spending saw about a 36 percent rise, the study said. At public research universities, spending for student services rose 20 percent over the decade, compared with 10 percent for instruction.
In community colleges, spending on students services increased 9.5 percent, compared with 3.4 percent for instruction.
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Nearly 5 Percent Exposed to Dengue Virus in Florida's Key West, Report Suggests
ScienceDaily (July 13, 2010) - An estimated 5 percent of the Key West, Fla., population -- over 1,000 people -- showed evidence of recent exposure to dengue virus in 2009, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Florida Department of Health.
After three initial locally acquired cases of dengue were reported in 2009, scientists from the CDC and the Florida Department of Health conducted a study to estimate the potential exposure of the Key West population to dengue virus.
Dengue is the most common virus transmitted by mosquitoes in the world. It causes an estimated 50 million-100 million infections and 25,000 deaths each year. From 1946 to 1980, no cases of dengue acquired in the continental United States were reported, and there has not been an outbreak in Florida since 1934.
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What do you think of the Union of Concerned Scientists ad campaign, "Scientists are Curious for Life"?
The Union of Concerned Scientists has launched a new ad campaign. It is part of their long-standing effort to shine a light on the scientific truth about human-caused global warming.
The thinking behind the ads, according to UCS President Kevin Knobloch, is that "People like science and scientists, but they often don't have a good idea of who they are as people."
Of Dr. Inouye, we find out:
Ever since I was a kid, I've been asking questions about the birds and the bees. How do they fly? What do they eat?
Now that I'm a trained scientist, my questions may be more sophisticated, but the passion is the same. I wonder what climate change is doing to the life cycle of wildflowers, and how bumblebees and hummingbirds are reacting to those changes. The bug's-eye view shows me that our world is warming like never before. My name is David Inouye, and I'm a concerned scientist.
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Carl Safina: The oil spill's unseen culprits, victims
The Gulf oil spill dwarfs comprehension, but we know this much: it's bad. Carl Safina scrapes out the facts in this blood-boiling cross-examination, arguing that the consequences will stretch far beyond the Gulf -- and many so-called solutions are making the situation worse.
Carl Safina explores how the ocean is changing, and what those changes mean for wildlife and for people. In the 1990s he helped lead campaigns to ban high-seas driftnets, re-write US federal fisheries law, work toward international conservation of tunas, sharks and other fishes, and achieve passage of a UN global fisheries treaty.
Safina is author of five books, and more than a hundred scientific and popular publications on ecology and oceans, including featured work in National Geographic and The New York Times. His first book, Song for the Blue Ocean, was chosen a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His second, Eye of the Albatross, won the John Burroughs Medal for nature writing and was chosen by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine as the year's best book for communicating science.
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Science says Asian carp are a serious threat to the Great Lakes (Sen. Debbie Stabenow)
On Tuesday, The Hill's Congress Blog ran a post entitled "Asian carp solution: Use science, not scare tactics," by Lisa Frede, a lobbyist for the chemical industry and an adviser to an interest group opposed to our efforts to stop the Asian carp from entering the Great Lakes. Her post mirrored the comments made by her boss at the Chemical Industry Council, Mark Biel, whose June 3 post on Congress Blog ("Carp catastrophists come up empty handed") attacked the science and the federal response to the Asian carp threat.
Mr. Biel said that "no evidence of Asian carp breaching existing barriers has been found." He went on to argue that the whole effort was a waste of time and money because of all the fish caught as part of the prevention efforts, "Asian carp just did not happen to be among them - not even one."
Well, unfortunately, a few weeks later, Asian carp were found past the barriers just six miles from Lake Michigan. A bighead carp was caught in Lake Calumet, and Asian carp were found spawning in the Wabash River in Illinois, not far from a connection to the Maumee River, which feeds into Lake Erie.
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Bobby Jindal's "barrier islands" are washing away
Last month I warned that Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) was demagoguing a sand barrier 'solution' that probably won't help, will take many months, use up valuable resources, vanish in the first storm - and many scientists think will make things worse. As one Coastal geologist explained: "I have yet to speak to a scientist who thinks the project will be effective."
So I know you will be shocked, shocked that Jindal's "obvious" response to the BP oil disaster is already failing. Brad Johnson has the story:
Since the beginning of May, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) has pushed a crash effort to build artificial "barrier islands" from dredged sand to prevent BP's toxic oil from reaching Louisiana's fragile coastline. He and other Louisiana politicians excoriated the federal government for waiting until June 3 to authorize the $360 million project, even though "categorically, across the board, every coastal scientist" questioned its wisdom. In mid-May, Jindal justified the barrier-island construction by saying it was the "obvious" thing to do:
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