EPA Solar companies are vying for land leases as the federal government identifies ‘solar study areas. The Department of the Interior’s move last month to accelerate development of large-scale solar power plants on federal land in six Western states could give an edge to companies that have already staked lease claims in 24 new ‘solar energy study areas. The initiative covers 670,000 acres overseen by the department’s Bureau of Land Management in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah. During the solar land rush of the last two years, scores of developers large and small have sought the best solar sites, and the bureau is currently reviewing 158 lease applications for solar projects covering 1.8 million acres. But the B.L.M. has yet to approve any leases and the new program is supposed to speed processing of land claims by identifying large tracts of the desert most suitable for solar development and then giving priority to projects proposed for those areas. California’s huge electricity market and renewable energy mandates have made the state a magnet for solar developers, including FPL Group and Chevron as well as solar developers First Solar, Tessera Solar, Solar Millennium, SolarReserve and […]
Over the last several years, without many people realizing it, the U.S. government has changed the focus of its anti-drug efforts, deemphasizing marijuana in favor of prescription drugs. A CBS News survey of government and nonprofit anti-drug groups has found a retreat from anti-marijuana campaigns over the past several years as prescription and over the counter drug abuse has grown amongst teens. In fact, the Partnership for a Drug Free America, the nation’s largest creator of anti-drug messages, hasn’t produced a single anti-marijuana public service advertisement since 2005. The change comes as a result of the decline in marijuana use amongst teens, and growing worry over the abuse of prescription drugs. Marijuana use has been declining for 10 years and past-month use is down 25 percent since 2001 according to the largest tracking study in the U.S., ‘Monitoring the Future’ by the University of Michigan. Meanwhile prescription drug abuse has held steady over the past five years according to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, with nearly one in five teens (19 percent) abusing prescription medications to get high. ‘There is a new threat in town,’ Robert Dennisoton of the Office of National Drug Control […]
The obesity epidemic in the United States is hitting minorities the hardest, U.S. health officials report. Here are the hard numbers: Blacks have a 51 percent greater prevalence of obesity than whites, and Hispanics have 21 percent greater obesity prevalence than whites, according to researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Obesity rates also vary geographically. Among blacks and whites, the highest rates of obesity are in the South and Midwest. Among Hispanics, obesity rates were highest in the South, Midwest and West, according to the July 17 issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a CDC publication. ‘There are at least three reasons for these findings,’ said study author Dr. Liping Pan, a CDC epidemiologist. ‘The first is individual behavior.’ For example, blacks and Hispanics are less likely to engage in physical activity compared with whites, she said. There are also differences in attitudes and cultural norms, Pan said. ‘For example, black and Hispanic women are more accepting of their own body size than white women,’ she said. ‘They are happy with their weight and less likely to try to lose weight.’ The third factor is the limited access […]
Are Middle Georgia summers hot enough for you? Because according to the U.S. government, they’re going to get hotter. Due to global warming, the Southeast is likely to see twice as many days a year with temperatures hitting the 90 degree mark or hotter, according to a federal report released last month. The report also predicts that the hottest days will be more than 10 degrees hotter. The report by the U.S. Global Change Research Program synthesizes the results of research assembled by 13 federal departments and agencies including NASA, the departments of defense and energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Research Council. It is the second report ever issued by the federal government on the predicted impacts of global climate change on the United States, and the first one to break down impacts by region. Among other things, it shows a sweltering Southeast. The report predicts that by the 2080s, the region will see an increase of 4.5 to 9 degrees in its average temperatures, depending on carbon dioxide emissions. But the extremes of heat will be greater and the heat index higher. This will be deadly to both humans and animals […]
Research by a group of Montreal scientists calls into question one of the most basic assumptions of human genetics: that when it comes to DNA, every cell in the body is essentially identical to every other cell. Their results appear in the July issue of the journal Human Mutation. This discovery may undercut the rationale behind numerous large-scale genetic studies conducted over the last 15 years, studies which were supposed to isolate the causes of scores of human diseases. Except for cancer, samples of diseased tissue are difficult or even impossible to take from living patients. Thus, the vast majority of genetic samples used in large-scale studies come in the form of blood. However, if it turns out that blood and tissue cells do not match genetically, these ambitious and expensive genome-wide association studies may prove to have been essentially flawed from the outset. This discovery sprang from an investigation into the underlying genetic causes of abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) led by Dr. Morris Schweitzer, Dr. Bruce Gottlieb, Dr. Lorraine Chalifour and colleagues at McGill University and the affiliated Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital. The researchers focused on BAK, a gene […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
