It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world’s harvests fail. They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world – the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon – which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe – was beginning to hit Britain as well. The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees’ navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up. Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive’s inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen […]
Dream journals being kept by students in a college psychology class have provided researchers with a unique look at how people experienced the events of 9/11, including the influence that television coverage of the World Trade Center attacks had on people’s levels of stress. Reported in the April 2007 issue of the journal Psychological Science, the study data finds that for every hour of television viewed on Sept. 11 – with some students reporting in excess of 13 hours watched – levels of stress, as indicated by dream content, increased significantly. In addition, the study found that time spent talking with family and friends helped individuals to better process the day’s horrific events. ‘We had not set out to conduct a scientific study of TV viewing and trauma,’ says lead author Ruth Propper, PhD, an Associate Professor of Psychology at Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass. ‘But it so happened that students enrolled in one of my courses during the fall 2001 semester were already in the process of keeping dream journals on a nightly basis. As the events of 9/11 were unfolding, I realized there was a valuable opportunity to find out what impact both media coverage […]
Iowa farmer Jeff Labertew knows the price of carbon dioxide as well as he does the price of corn. A company pays him $1 per acre – about 50 cents per ton of CO2 emissions – not to till his soil. (Plowing releases CO2 trapped under the soil’s crust.) But that’s a voluntary program. The company pays him to offset its own emissions. Now a raft of bills emerging in the US Congress wants to mandate something similar – a system where the market determines the price. One bill envisions an upper limit of $7 per ton; others would let it swing far higher. In Europe, which has wrestled far longer with impending mandatory cuts in emissions, the price has fluctuated from $30 a ton to $1. Of all the issues now facing policymakers worried about climate change, the price of carbon emissions may be the most fiendishly difficult to solve. Set it too low and companies have little incentive to curb their emissions. Set it too high and the economy grinds to a halt. At least a half dozen bills in Congress aim to solve the problem by letting the market decide through ‘cap-and-trade’ systems. But […]
A new study authorized by US Congress has found that the federal abstinence education programs that encourage adolescents to abstain from having sex during their early years proved ineffective. The abstinence program did not persuade youth from having sex, nor change their other sexual behavior including condom use, according to the 164-paged study report released yesterday by Mathematica-Policy Research, Inc. The report will be reviewed by the United States Department of Health and Human Service Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. The Abstinence Education Program receives $175 million from the federal government and funds also from states each year, according to the report. The program results from the enactment of Title V, Section 510 of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 which aims to promote sexual abstinence and health behavior in teenagers. For the study of the abstinence education program, researchers surveyed 2057 youth for their sexual behaviors in 2005 and 2006. The participants were enrolled in the program four to six years ago. By the time the study was finished, the subjects were on average 16.5 years old. […]
The earliest life on Earth might have been just as purple as it is green today, a scientist claims. Ancient microbes might have used a molecule other than chlorophyll to harness the Sun’s rays, one that gave the organisms a violet hue. Chlorophyll, the main photosynthetic pigment of plants, absorbs mainly blue and red wavelengths from the Sun and reflects green ones, and it is this reflected light that gives plants their leafy color. This fact puzzles some biologists because the sun transmits most of its energy in the green part of the visible spectrum. ‘Why would chlorophyll have this dip in the area that has the most energy?’ said Shil DasSarma, a microbial geneticist at the University of Maryland. After all, evolution has tweaked the human eye to be most sensitive to green light (which is why images from night-vision goggles are tinted green). So why is photosynthesis not fine-tuned the same way? Possible answer DasSarma thinks it is because chlorophyll appeared after another light-sensitive molecule called retinal was already present on early Earth. Retinal, today found in the plum-colored membrane of a photosynthetic microbe called halobacteria, absorbs green light and reflects […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
