STAMFORD, CT. – After four months of tabulating data from all 50 states, the results are in. Thanks to the efforts of 2.2 million volunteers across America, more than 37 million plastic bottles and more than 2.5 million scrap tires were diverted from the waste stream during Keep America Beautiful’s Great American CleanupTM, the nation’s largest community improvement program which takes place annually from March 1 through May 31. These highlights were among the official results announced today by Great American Cleanup Managing Director Gail Cunningham, and were emblematic of the scale of this national grassroots effort to clean up, green up, fix up and revitalize neighborhoods from coast to coast. ‘Through the Great American Cleanup, Keep America Beautiful’s mission to improve communities is put in to action,’ said G. Raymond Empson, president of Keep America Beautiful. ‘We know that our participating organizations are bringing a sense of ownership and pride to their respective communities, making them safer, cleaner and more economically viable.’ Across America, volunteers removed more than 228 million pounds of litter and debris. The volunteers, registering more than 7.5 million volunteer hours, collected 10 percent more litter and debris than the all-time record of […]
Here’s a basic question: What has been the cost of the Iraq war for Iraq? As it turns out, it’s not easy to find an economist who can provide an answer. Although several studies have dealt with the war’s cost to Americans, there has been no comparable work addressing the cost to Iraqis. Of course, the loss of human life has always been evident. Recently, the United Nations estimated that 100 Iraqis were dying each day, on average, as a result of the war. Others have put the number much higher. A recent study in The Lancet, the British medical journal, placed the average daily figure at about 500, amounting to the loss of 2 percent of Iraq’s population since the invasion in March 2003. The economic cost has been less visible. Published information on the subject is very limited, although one economist, Colin Rowat, has made some preliminary calculations using the best sources available. Professor Rowat, a specialist on the Iraqi economy at the University of Birmingham in Britain, relied mainly on data from the International Monetary Fund to estimate the war’s overall effect on the Iraqi economy. His calculations are a work in progress, but what […]
GENEVA — Water scarcity harms the case for using food crops to make biofuels, a leading environmental author and journalist said on Thursday. ‘The downside of growing food for fuel is water,’ said Fred Pearce, author of the book ‘When the Rivers Run Dry’. Surging crude oil prices have strengthened the argument for green energy created by cultivating food crops such as sugar cane to make ethanol fuel and vegetable oils to make biodiesel. The politics of water will become critical as demand for water from rising populations and the needs of industry increase, said Pearce, editor of Britain’s New Scientist magazine. About one billion people lack access to clean drinking water, Pearce said in a keynote speech to the two-day Sugaronline conference in Geneva. Vast quantities of water were needed to cultivate crops, with two-thirds of the world’s water used in agriculture, Pearce said. ‘Sugar is one of the thirstiest crops in the world,’ he said, estimating that 600-800 tonnes of water were required to grow one tonne of cane. Brazil, the world’s biggest sugar producer, has a thriving biofuels industry, converting about half its cane into fuel ethanol to power vehicles. […]
BEIJING — A new test that analyzes the tumor at the gene level is 80 percent accurate in predicting which drug or combination of drugs would be most effective against that particular cancer, a U.S. study has found. A new test that analyzes the tumor at the gene level is 80 percent accurate in predicting which drug or combination of drugs would be most effective against that particular cancer, a U.S. study has found. BEIJING,– A new test that analyzes the tumor at the gene level is 80 percent accurate in predicting which drug or combination of drugs would be most effective against that particular cancer, U.S. researchers reported in the latest eidition of Nature Medicine. A team of researchers from Duke University in North Carolina formulated the test by using an Affymetrix ‘gene chip.’ The tumors of a number of cancer patients were analyzed. The test evolved by studying the activity of genes in the cells of these tumors. The objective was to find a molecule called the ‘Messenger RNA’ in each cell. The trail of ‘Messenger RNA’ gives the genetic signature of the tumor or the activity levels of different genes. From this it […]
WASHINGTON — Deeply controversial issues like abortion and suicide rights have nothing to do with the Constitution, and unelected judges too often choose to find new rights at the expense of the democratic process, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Saturday. Scalia, during a talk on the judiciary sponsored by the National Italian American Foundation, dismissed the idea of judicial independence as an absolute virtue. He noted that dozens of states, since the mid-1800s, have chosen to let citizens elect their judges. ‘You talk about independence as though it is unquestionably and unqualifiably a good thing,’ Scalia said. ‘It may not be. It depends on what your courts are doing.’ Scalia added, ‘The more your courts become policy-makers, the less sense it makes to have them entirely independent.’ Scalia, a leading conservative voice after 20 years on the court, said people naturally get upset with the growing number of cases in which a federal court intrudes on social issues better handled by the political process. ‘Take the abortion issue,’ he said. ‘Whichever side wins, in the courts, the other side feels cheated. I mean, you know, there’s something to be said for both sides.’ […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
