Panich52
Panich52's JournalBiggest five – or six? – mass extinctions ever - AsapSCIENCE video
Biggest five – or six? – mass extinctions ever
Apr 24, 2015
by Eleanor Imster in Videos » Earth, Science Wire
Over 99% of all the animal species that have ever lived are now extinct. Here are Earth’s biggest extinctions, in under 5 minutes. New video from AsapSCIENCE.
http://earthsky.org/earth/biggest-five-or-six-mass-extinctions-ever?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=e9351c2011-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-e9351c2011-393525109
More from AsapSCIENCE: Animals we wish still existed:
Watch the Arctic ice pack vanish
Watch the Arctic ice pack vanish
Apr 23, 2015
by EarthSky in » Earth, Science Wire
Decades ago, most of Arctic’s winter ice pack was made up of thick, perennial ice. Not anymore. Watch the change in this one-minute animation.
Each winter, sea ice expands to fill nearly the entire Arctic Ocean basin, reaching its maximum extent in March. Each summer, the ice pack shrinks, reaching its smallest extent in September. The ice that survives at least one summer melt season tends to be thicker and more likely to survive future summers. Since the 1980s, the amount of this perennial ice (sometimes called multiyear) has declined.
This animation tracks the relative amount of ice of different ages from 1987 through early November 2014. The first age class on the scale (1, darkest blue) means “first-year ice,” which formed in the most recent winter. (In other words, it’s in its first year of growth.) The oldest ice (>9, white) is ice that is more than nine years old. Dark gray areas indicate open water or coastal regions where the spatial resolution of the data is coarser than the land map.
As the animation shows, Arctic sea ice doesn’t hold still; it moves continually. East of Greenland, the Fram Strait is an exit ramp for ice out of the Arctic Ocean. Ice loss through the Fram Strait used to be offset by ice growth in the Beaufort Gyre, northeast of Alaska. There, perennial ice could persist for years, drifting around and around the basin’s large, looping current.
Around the start of the 21st century, however, the Beaufort Gyre became less friendly to perennial ice. Warmer waters made it less likely that ice would survive its passage through the southernmost part of the gyre. Starting around 2008, the very oldest ice shrank to a narrow band along the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
In September 2012, Arctic sea ice melt broke all previous records. ...
More
http://earthsky.org/earth/watch-the-vanishing-arctic-ice-pack?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=e9351c2011-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-e9351c2011-393525109
Fly through Hubble’s 25th anniversary image VIDEO
Fly through Hubble’s 25th anniversary image
Apr 23, 2015
by Deborah Byrd in Videos » Science Wire, Space
Fly through the Hubble Space Telescope’s 25th anniversary image of star cluster Westerlund 2 in 3-D!
This visualization from NASA provides a three-dimensional perspective on Hubble’s 25th anniversary image of the nebula Gum 29 with the star cluster Westerlund 2 at its core.
The flight traverses the foreground stars and approaches the lower left rim of the nebula Gum 29. Passing through the wispy darker clouds on the near side, the journey reveals bright gas illuminated by the intense radiation of the newly formed stars of cluster Westerlund 2. Within the nebula, several pillars of dark, dense gas are being shaped by the energetic light and strong stellar winds from the brilliant cluster of thousands of stars. Note that the visualization is intended to be a scientifically reasonable interpretation and that distances within the model are significantly compressed.
More
http://earthsky.org/space/fly-through-hubbles-25th-anniversary-image?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=2810865bda-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-2810865bda-393525109
Spectacular Calbuco volcano in Chile!
still from vid
Spectacular Calbuco volcano in Chile!
Apr 23, 2015
by Deborah Byrd in Photos » Earth, Science Wire
After remaining dormant for 42 years, the Calbuco volcano in southern Chile erupted twice on Wednesday (April 22, 2015). An ash cloud rose at least 15 kilometers (9 miles) above the volcano, menacing the nearby communities of Puerto Montt (Chile) and San Carlos de Bariloche (Argentina). Some 1,500 to 2,000 people were evacuated; no casualties have been reported so far. The first eruption sent up vast plumes of smoke. The second eruption later that night sent up red-hot rocks and produced a spectacular display of volcanic lightning. Airlines cancelled flights. Lava flowed into Chapo Lake, which lies lies immediately southeast of the volcano, on the same day.
The Chilean Emergency Management Agency and the Chilean Geology and Mining Service (SERNAGEOMIN) ordered evacuations within a 20-kilometer (12 mile) radius around the volcano.
The eruption also prompted concerns that the dust could contaminate water, trigger respiratory illnesses and halt air travel.
Dario Almonacid posted the video below to YouTube on the day of the eruption.
More
http://earthsky.org/earth/spectacular-eruption-of-calbuco-volcano-in-chile?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=2810865bda-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-2810865bda-393525109
4/24/15: top 5 posts on RightWingWatch.org this week: gay X-Men, OKC bombing false flag, Frothy's BS
Best of the Blog 4/24/2015
Here are the top five most popular posts on RightWingWatch.org this week
Franklin Graham Furious That Marvel's Iceman Is Gay
http://site.pfaw.org/site/R?i=aUO794716Ujw_i7qOCIjCQ
Alex Jones: Oklahoma City Bombing A False Flag Designed To Embarrass Conservatives
http://site.pfaw.org/site/R?i=Ub4vAdwH51REF4SOMxGpXA
Rick Santorum: Obama Established A Secular Theocracy
http://site.pfaw.org/site/R?i=cbZXC2ye0EPKg_TJvmCUlQ
Janet Porter: Gay Marriage To Blame For Noah's Flood, Will Usher In End Times
http://site.pfaw.org/site/R?i=I-8lRSBCgeZy16KAkZjhJA
EW Jackson: Slavery In America Wasn't A 'Racial Issue'
http://site.pfaw.org/site/R?i=Q5ul830r8XaGl4DUb1BPUQ
A US Government Agency Quietly Acknowledged That Marijuana May Help Fight Brain Tumors
Vice:
A US Government Agency Quietly Acknowledged That Marijuana May Help Fight Brain Tumors
Researchers have been studying the medical benefits of marijuana for years, but this month marks the first time the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a research group funded by the US government, has acknowledged that cannabis extracts may help kill certain cancer cells and reduce the size of others.
NIDA quietly revised a page on its website titled, "DrugFacts: Is Marijuana Medicine?" this month to state that, "Evidence from one cell culture study suggests that purified extracts from whole-plant marijuana can slow the growth of cancer cells from one of the most serious types of brain tumors."
The update acknowledges research published last November in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapies by scientists from St. George's, University of London. The researchers found that THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in weed, and cannabidiol, an extract, caused "dramatic reductions" in the growth of glioma tumors in mice. Glioma accounts for 80 percent of malignant brain tumors in humans.
More
http://dpa.convio.net/site/R?i=wHss_05M3h3e0xe1WbDEVg
Floating nuclear power stations for the Arctic?
What could possibly go wrong?Alaska Dispatch
An Ontario company is proposing the idea of small floating nuclear stations to power mining sites and towns in the Arctic.
At a mining symposium last week in the Arctic city of Iqaluit in Nunavut, Dunedin Energy Systems suggested the idea to meet growing energy needs in the North.
Currently Arctic towns, cities and various mine sites are powered by diesel generators. These produce substantial pollution and with fuel costs rising along with energy demand, alternatives are needed.
The company noted that the Russian firm OKBM is building a so-called FNPP -- floating nuclear power plant. The Akademik Lomonosov will have two modified naval propulsion reactors producing a peak total of 70 megawatts of electricity or 300 megawatts of heat.
For comparison, the diesel plant at Agnico Eagle Mining Ltd.’s Meadowbank gold mine in Nunavut has a generating capacity of 26 megawatts, and the City of Iqaluit’s power plant has a capacity of about 12 MW, Lang said.
The Russian ship is expected to be delivered to the Siberian port of Pevek, a town of 4,000, in 2016.
Some 15 countries around the world have expressed interest in leasing a Russian FNPP, according to a website called Nuclear Threat Initiative.
More
http://www.adn.com/article/20150422/floating-nuclear-power-stations-arctic
Cancer fear prompts FDA to warn of common uterus procedure
Cancer fear prompts FDA to warn of common uterus procedure
FDA says risk of power morcellation, a technique used to treat painful fibroids in women, is much higher than thought
The Food and Drug Administration is warning women that a surgical procedure that tens of thousands of women undergo each year to eliminate growths in the uterus could inadvertently spread cancer to other parts of the body.
The agency is discouraging doctors from performing the procedure, which uses an electronic device to grind and shred uterine tissue so it can be removed through a small incision in the abdomen. Known as laparoscopic power morcellation, the technique is widely used to treat painful fibroids, either by removing the noncancerous growths themselves or the entire uterus.
Doctors have long recognized the risk of accidentally spreading cancer from undetected tumors, but FDA officials said Thursday the problem now appears far more common than thought. An FDA analysis estimates that 1 in 350 U.S. women who undergo fibroid procedures each year have a form of cancer called uterine sarcoma.
More
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/4/17/power-morcellationcancer.html
Friday FAQ: What is the smell of rain?
Friday FAQ
What is the smell of rain?
Apr 17, 2015
by EarthSky Voices in FAQs » Earth, Human World, Science Wire
Australia’s national science agency – the CSIRO – has come up with some pretty amazing inventions over the past 86 years of research, from polymer banknotes to insect repellent and the world-changing Wi-Fi. But we can also lay claim to something a little more esoteric – we actually invented a whole new word. And no, we’re not talking about one of these new-fangled internet words like “YOLO”, “selfie” or “totes”.
The word is “petrichor,” and it’s used to describe the distinct scent of rain in the air. Or, to be more precise, it’s the name of an oil that’s released from the Earth into the air before rain begins to fall.
This heady smell of oncoming wet weather is something most people are familiar with – in fact, some scientists now suggest that humans inherited an affection for the smell from ancestors who relied on rainy weather for their survival.
_b]Origins
Even the word itself has ancient origins. It’s derived from the Greek “petra” (stone) and “ichor” which, in Greek mythology, is the ethereal blood of the gods.
But the story behind its scientific discovery is a lesser known tale. So, how is it that we came to find this heavenly blood in the stone?
Nature of Argillaceous Odour might be a mouthful, but this was the name of the paper published in the Nature journal of March 7, 1964, by CSIRO scientists Isabel (Joy) Bear and Richard Thomas, that first described petrichor.
More
http://earthsky.org/earth/whats-that-smell-in-the-air-when-its-about-to-rain?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=9ee7cc05c8-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-9ee7cc05c8-393525109
Disenfranchizing 40% of electorate is what weakening democratic process looks like.
Open primaries prevent the centralisation of party powerPOINT
Political Parties are able to wield considerable power, controlling their party members and representatives, particularly in Parliamentary political systems. Through use of patronage and the threat of sanctions such as deselection, party leaders are able to manipulate representatives to fulfil their own aims rather than those of constituents.[1]
By instituting Open Primaries, the focus of representatives shifts from the party leadership to the constituents whom prospective candidates hope to represent. Scrutiny over the representative’s conduct would be in the hands of the voters, with reselection in an Open Primary being contingent upon the member looking after the interests of their constituents, rather than the interest of the party as is the case in many countries that do not have Open Primary systems.[2] By using Open Primaries, elections once again becomes about representing the people as opposed to being a means to power as is the case under the status quo in countries that do not use it.
[1] Stone, Daniel, ‘Prop 14’s Winners and Losers’, Newsweek, 8 June 2010, http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/06/09/prop-14-s-winners-and-losers.html
[2] Triggs, Matthew, ‘Open primaries’, Adam Smith Institute, 16 September 2010, http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/politics-and-government/open-primaries
•••
Open primaries allow the electorate to express nuanced polling choices
POINT
Open Primaries allows for the electorate to make a considered choice between candidate and party, with other considerations beyond the partisan being up for consideration.
In safe districts, voters are given a choice between members of the same party, allowing for voters to effectively choose the next member based upon past record and views on big issues, allowing for the ideological cleavages within parties to brought under closer examination, with voters in the safe seat choosing the type of Conservatism/Liberalism/Socialism they prefer.[1]
This can help to provide choice even when one party is already assured of winning the seat, thus providing a degree of competition in the district, engaging voters in the electoral process.
[1] Skelton, George, ‘California open primaries? Give them a chance’, Los Angeles Times, 11 February 2010, http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/11/local/la-me-cap11-2010feb11
•••
These are 2 points from a pro-con site. The counterpoints were not strong enough to convince me. Only 2 parties control all levels of our gov't. These are increasingly polarized so that moderate voices, and officials who are more willing to compromise are locked out.
In the general election, a large percentage is forced to choose between candidates for whom they had no voice in selecting. If we are to truly be democratic, why should only powerful party machines be allowed to rule the process of choosing those whom will govern all?
This House believes that open primaries are the most effective method of selecting candidates for elections | idebate.org
http://www2.idebate.org/debatabase/debates/politics/house-believes-open-primaries-most-effective-method-selecting-candidates
•
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayHometown: WV
Member since: Thu Jan 15, 2015, 01:37 AM
Number of posts: 5,829
