Waters along North America’s Pacific coast are becoming more acidic, posing a threat to marine life, federal scientists reported Friday - adding that while that fits global warming scenarios, no one had expected the acidification to happen so soon. ‘We did not expect to see this extent of ocean acidification until the middle to the end of the century,’ said study co-author Chris Sabine. ‘Our results show for the first time that a large section of the North American continental shelf is impacted by ocean acidification,’ the experts wrote in the study published in the peer-reviewed journal Science. Acidification describes the process, natural or manmade, of ocean water becoming corrosive as a result of carbon dioxide being absorbed from the atmosphere. The researchers said anthropogenic, or manmade, emissions of carbon dioxide are likely to blame since the acidified water that is being ‘upwelled’ seasonally from the deeper ocean is from the last 50 years, a period when the burning of fossil fuels raised CO2 levels dramatically. ‘Other continental shelf regions may also be impacted where anthropogenic CO2-enriched water is being upwelled onto the shelf,’ they concluded. Threat ‘right now’ ‘Ocean acidification may be […]
MIAMI — The prominent Cuban-American organization that Republican President Ronald Reagan once counted on to secure victory in Florida was electrified on Friday by an appearance by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. In a lunchtime speech to the Cuban American National Foundation, Obama offered a new Cuba policy approach to an audience accustomed to presidential candidates coming to show solidarity, but not to challenge the longstanding isolation of the island’s communist government. Obama touched on one of his more radical ideas: an often-criticized willingness to meet with Cuban leader Raul Castro. ‘I know what the easy thing is to do for American politicians. . . . Every four years, they come down to Miami, they talk tough, they go back to Washington, and nothing changes in Cuba,’ said Obama, who was greeted by a standing ovation and scattered chanting of his campaign slogan ‘Yes We Can.’ ‘After eight years of the disastrous policies of George Bush, it is time, I believe, to pursue direct diplomacy, with friend and foe alike, without preconditions.’ He repeated previous statements that if elected president, he would immediately lift the limits on Cuban Americans who want to travel to Cuba or […]
This drug is peddled on every street corner in America, and is found in every country in the world. It is psychoactive, a stimulant and addictive. Users say that it increases alertness and focus, and reduces fatigue. But the high does not last and addicts must keep consuming it in increasing quantities. Put this way, sipping coffee sounds more like an abomination than the world’s most accepted form of drug abuse. But centuries of familiarity have put people at their ease. In the coming years science is likely to create many novel drugs that boost memory, concentration and planning. These may well be less harmful than coffee-and will almost certainly be more useful. But will people treat them with as much tolerance? High time The new cognition-enhancing drugs are designed to treat debilitating diseases such as Alzheimer’s, attention-deficit disorder and schizophrenia. But because they act deep in neural pathways of the brain, some of them are bound also to enhance people’s power to think and learn (see article). Such drugs will inevitably be used by healthy people too. That is the lesson from medicines such as Ritalin (methylphenidate) and Provigil (modafinil), which are now widely used ‘off label’ […]
WASHINGTON — Home prices fell a record 1.7 percent in the first quarter and the number of workers on jobless benefit rolls held at a four-year high, underscoring the economy’s woes, data on Thursday showed. The continued slump in housing prices in the first quarter pushed them 3.1 percent below their year-ago level, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight said. Like the quarter-to-quarter drop, the decline was the biggest in the 17 years the housing regulator has tracked the data. OFHEO said prices fell 0.4 percent in March from February and are now down 3.7 percent from their April 2007 peak. Other home price measures have shown even steeper declines. A separate report from the Labor Department showed first-time claims for state unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell 9,000 last week to 365,000. However, the number of workers still on the benefit rolls after drawing an initial week of aid held at 3.073 million in the week ended May 10, the latest for which figures were available. The last time so-called continued claims were higher was in March 2004. ‘The data tends to support our call of a move in the unemployment rate to 5.5 percent,’ […]
WASHINGTON — More than half of Americans will not be taking a summer holiday this year, opting instead to stay home and save money as the US economy slumps, a survey published Wednesday showed. ‘The economic downturn is leading to layoffs and stretched resources, which in turn leads to increased workloads and pressure to improve performance,’ said Tom Musbach, senior managing editor of Yahoo Hotjobs, which conducted the poll. Fifty-one percent of the Internet giant’s 1,100 respondents said in an online questionnaire that they would skip their annual summer holiday. That is a sizeable increase over 2007, when 45 percent went without a summer vacation. ‘Employees, now more than ever, need a break from the pressure, but are instead choosing to forgo vacation in order to meet growing demands and protect dwindling wallets,’ Musbach said. Forty-four percent of respondents said their workload is heavier today than last year, and 57 percent said they felt ‘burned out’ — up from 49 percent last year. Key sources of stress for American workers are insufficient resources to get the job done, an excessive workload, a poor leadership structure, an US ailing economy, and ‘the boss,’ the survey showed. […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
