A common spin in the right wing coverage of BP’s oil spill is a gleeful suggestion that the gulf blowout is Obama’s Katrina. In truth, culpability for the disaster can more accurately be laid at the Bush Administration’s doorstep. For eight years, George Bush’s presidency infected the oil industry’s oversight agency, the Minerals Management Service, with a septic culture of corruption from which it has yet to recover. Oil patch alumnae in the White House encouraged agency personnel to engineer weakened safeguards that directly contributed to the gulf catastrophe. The absence of an acoustical regulator — a remotely triggered dead man’s switch that might have closed off BP’s gushing pipe at its sea floor wellhead when the manual switch failed (the fire and explosion on the drilling platform may have prevented the dying workers from pushing the button) — was directly attributable to industry pandering by the Bush team. Acoustic switches are required by law for all offshore rigs off Brazil and in Norway’s North Sea operations. BP uses the devise voluntarily in Britain’s North Sea and elsewhere in the world as do other big players like Holland’s Shell and France’s Total. In 2000, the Minerals Management Service […]
Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found that by applying chemicals to manipulate genes in a developing embryo, they’ve been able to change the brain of one type of cichlid fish to resemble that of another. The researchers also discovered differences in the general patterning of the brain very early in development before functional neurons form in a process known as neurogenesis. This finding is at odds with a well-held theory known as ‘late equals large. The research appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition beginning May 3, 2010. In the mid 1990s, the hypothesis called ‘late equals large was put forth to explain the way brains evolve across species. The brain begins as a blank slate. In early development, the anterior, or front, part of the brain is specified from the posterior, or back, part. After that, neurogenesis occurs as precursor cells mature to become neurons. These precursors can replicate endlessly, but once they become functional neurons, replication ends. The later the switch from precursors to mature neurons, the larger the brain, or brain region, becomes. The ‘late equals large model holds that the brains of different species, for example […]
Some depressed patients who don’t respond to or tolerate antidepressant medications may benefit from a non-invasive treatment that stimulates the brain with a pulsing electromagnet, a study suggests. This first industry-independent, multi-site, randomized, tightly controlled trial of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) found that it produced significant antidepressant effects in a subgroup of patients, with few side effects. Active rTMS treatment accounted for remissions in 14 percent of antidepressant-resistant patients actively treated, compared to about 5 percent for a simulated treatment. ‘Although rTMS treatment has not yet lived up to early hopes that it might replace more invasive therapies, this study suggests that the treatment may be effective in at least some treatment-resistant patients,’ said Thomas R. Insel, M.D., director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health, which funded the study. Mark George, M.D., of the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston; Harold Sackeim, Ph.D., and Sarah Lisanby, M.D., of Columbia University, New York City; David Avery, M.D., of the University of Washington, Seattle; William McDonald, M.D., of Emory University, Atlanta; and colleagues, report on their findings in the May 2009 issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry. […]
Investor Marc Faber said China’s economy will slow and possibly ‘crash within a year as declines in stock and commodity prices signal the nation’s property bubble is set to burst. The Shanghai Composite Index has failed to regain its 2009 high while industrial commodities and shares of Australian resource exporters are acting ‘heavy, Faber said. The opening of the World Expo in Shanghai last week is ‘not a particularly good omen, he said, citing a property bust and depression that followed the 1873 World Exhibition in Vienna. ‘The market is telling you that something is not quite right, Faber, the publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report, said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Hong Kong today. ‘The Chinese economy is going to slow down regardless. It is more likely that we will even have a crash sometime in the next nine to 12 months. An index tracking Chinese stocks traded in Hong Kong dropped 1.8 percent today, the most in two weeks, after the central bank raised reserve requirements for the third time this year. The Shanghai Composite has slumped 12 percent this year, Asia’s worst performer, as policy makers seek to rein in a […]
CONCORD, Mass. — The town of Concord has banned the sale of bottled drinking water in town beginning in 2011. ‘We only have one planet and I just don’t want to see it spoiled,’ said Jean Hill, who introduced the measure at Concord’s Town Meeting. Hill said that New York, Illinois and Virginia, as well as more than 100 cities, have taken action to cut spending on bottled water. The measured passed by Concord would allow the sale of refillable containers of water, which could still be sold and delivered in town. Only plastic bottles that companies cannot reuse would be banned. ‘Water is something we can get from the faucet. You can’t turn your faucet on and get soda,’ said Selectwoman Virginia McIntyre, explaining why other plastic bottles would not be banned. Supporters say the production of plastic water bottles uses 17 million barrels of oil each year. The beverage industry opposes the measure. ‘If you think about the fact that our bottles are getting smaller and if you think about the fact that our bottles are going into the recycle bins in Concord, it’s a crazy policy,’ said Ralph Crowley of Polar […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
