Nobody’s talking about bulldozing the West End just yet. But at a time when other shrinking cities are contemplating smaller geographic footprints to save money and resources, is this a talk that Pittsburgh and the Obama administration soon might have? Pittsburgh was one of several cities mentioned in a Daily Telegraph (U.K.) story published this month and headlined rather ominously, ‘U.S. Cities May Have To Be Bulldozed In Order To Survive.’ The story, which was picked up by the Drudge Report and soon after was bouncing around the Internet and talk radio, explored ‘a pioneering scheme’ that originated in Flint, Mich.: ‘Razing entire districts and returning the land to nature,’ thus right-sizing the city to meet the current population (114,000), not the population it once served (196,000). Dan Kildee, treasurer of Flint’s Genesee County, ‘outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, [and] has now been approached by the U.S. government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learned to the rest of the country,’ the Daily Telegraph story said. Pittsburgh was one of 50 downsizing candidates alleged to have been identified in a report published by the […]
Banning or restricting the use of certain types of fishing gear could help the world’s coral reefs and their fish populations survive the onslaughts of climate change according to a study by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and other groups. The international team of scientists has proposed that bans on fishing gear – like spear guns, fish traps, and beach seine nets – could aid in the recovery of reefs and fish populations hard hit by coral bleaching events. Around the world corals have been dying at alarming rates, due to unusually warm water events resulting from global warming. Research carried out in Kenya and Papua New Guinea has shown that certain types of gear are more damaging to corals, to coral-dependent fish and to the key species of fish that are needed to help reefs recover from bleaching or storm damage. ‘This is creating a double jeopardy for both the corals and certain types of reef fish. They are already on the edge because of overfishing- and the additional impact caused by a bleaching can push them over Dr Cinner explains. The result […]
People who visit their primary care physician for routine blood tests or screenings are often not informed of the results, a new study finds. People Who Read This Also Read The failure of doctors and medical facilities to follow-up and give people test results is ‘relatively common,’ the researchers wrote, even when the results are abnormal and potentially troublesome, and affects one of every 14 tests. ‘If you’re a patient, it’s often assumed that no news is good news,’ acknowledged Dr. Lawrence P. Casalino, an associate professor and chief of the division of outcomes and effectiveness research in the public health department at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City and the study’s lead author. ‘But the bottom line is that is not always the case, and patients should not passively go along with that.’ Casalino and his colleagues report their findings in the June 22 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. The researchers reviewed the medical records of 5,434 people aged 50 to 69 years old. They focused on those who, in the previous year, had abnormal results on one of 11 blood tests or one of three screening tests at primary care facilities […]
Scientists have discovered what may be the least inhabited place in the ocean. The seafloor sediments in the middle of the South Pacific have fewer living cells than anywhere else measured, a new study found. Oceanographer Steven D’Hondt of the University of Rhode Island and colleagues took a boat out to the middle of the ocean and collected cores, or cylindrical samples of sediment, from the bottom of the sea about 2.5 to 3.7 miles (4 to 6 km) deep. They found about 1,000 living cells in each cubic centimeter of sediment - a tally that is roughly 1,000 times less than in other seafloor sediments. ‘People were previously just taking cores in parts of the ocean fairly close to shore and assuming their results were typical of the ocean as a whole,’ D’Hondt told LiveScience. D’Hondt suspects that further research will show other areas out in the middle of the ocean may be similarly devoid of life. He and his team detailed their results in the June 22 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The area they explored in the South Pacific is what’s called a gyre, where […]
PARIS — President Nicolas Sarkozy lashed out Monday at the practice of wearing the Muslim burqa, insisting the full-body religious gown is a sign of the ‘debasement’ of women and that it won’t be welcome in France. The French leader expressed support for a recent call by dozens of legislators to create a parliamentary commission to study a small but growing trend of wearing the full-body garment in France. In the first presidential address in 136 years to a joint session of France’s two houses of parliament, Sarkozy laid out his support for a ban even before the panel has been approved-braving critics who fear the issue is a marginal one and could stigmatize Muslims in France. ‘In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity,’ Sarkozy said to extended applause in a speech at the Chateau of Versailles southwest of Paris. ‘The burqa is not a religious sign, it’s a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement-I want to say it solemnly,’ he said. ‘It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic.’ In France, the terms […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
