JUSTYN HORNOR, - Cleantech Authority
Stephan: I believe LENR technology is coming, and I think this is an important consideration if it does. This is far from the final word but, at least, the subject is now being discussed.
A burning question has been slowly simmering to the surface in alternative energy forums: If LENR (a low-energy nuclear reaction device) works, what’s going to happen to solar power or other energy sources? As organizations like Defkalion, Brillouine, Andrea Rossi, and others try to bring a LENR-based product to market within the year; people are starting to wonder if solar will survive if-and that’s a big ‘IF
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JAMES HANSEN, - The New York Times
Stephan: This is polemic, I freely acknowledge it, but the essay is factually accurate, and it is coming from the leading American government scientist on climate. I feel particularly sorry for those red state societies, where climate denierism is at the highest. As Hansen points out they are going to be especially impacted; it is going to wreck the lives of tens of thousands of families in those states. But with their Republican -- and yes, denierism is an overwhelmingly a Republican position -- blocking any meaningfully action those families have no one but themselves to blame. It you vote for fools you get foolish policy.
James Hansen is the Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Global warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves ‘regardless of what we do.
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SANAT VALLIKAPPEN, - Bloomberg
Stephan: Overseas investment is not a trend that draws much attention, because only the rich can really play the game. But this change in the law, I believe, is going to have a subtle but very powerful effect. What I find notable is that banks and investment institutions in Asia and Europe, but particularly Asia, turn millions of dollars of American money away and don't miss it because of the vast new wealth being created outside of the U.S. Over time the effect will be to increase America's decline.
Go away, American millionaires.
That’s what some of the world’s largest wealth-management firms are saying ahead of Washington’s implementation of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, known as Fatca, which seeks to prevent tax evasion by Americans with offshore accounts. HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), Deutsche Bank AG, Bank of Singapore Ltd. and DBS Group Holdings Ltd. (DBS) all say they have turned away business.
‘I don’t open U.S. accounts, period,
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MICHELLE ROBERTS, Health Editor - BBC News (U.K.)
Stephan: Here is a view of cancer that you may not have considered.
One in six cancers – two million a year globally – are caused by largely treatable or preventable infections, new estimates suggest.
The Lancet Oncology review, which looked at incidence rates for 27 cancers in 184 countries, found four main infections are responsible.
These four – human papillomaviruses, Helicobacter pylori and hepatitis B and C viruses – account for 1.9m cases of cervical, gut and liver cancers.
Most cases are in the developing world.
The team from the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France says more efforts are needed to tackle these avoidable cases and recognise cancer as a communicable disease.
‘Preventable’
The proportion of cancers related to infection is about three times higher in parts of the developing world, such as east Asia, than in developed countries like the UK – 22.9% versus 7.4%, respectively.
Nearly a third of cases occur in people younger than 50 years.
Among women, cancer of the cervix accounted for about half of the infection-related cancers. In men, more than 80% were liver and gastric cancers.
Drs Catherine de Martel and Martyn Plummer, who led the research, said: ‘Infections with certain viruses, bacteria, and parasites are some of the biggest and preventable causes of cancer worldwide
‘Application of existing public-health methods for […]
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MANIMUGDHA S SHARMA, - The Times of India
Stephan: This is one of the nicest and most uplifting stories I have published in many months. It shows very clearly what one man can accomplish with nothing but the intention to serve the good. I see it as a call to all of us to do better ourselves.
Way back in 1953, French author Jean Giono wrote the epic tale The Man Who Planted Trees. It seemed so real that readers thought the central character, Elzeard Bouffier , was a living individual until the author clarified he had created the person only to make his readers fall in love with trees. Assam’s Jadav Payeng has never heard of Giono’s book. But he could be Bouffier. He has single-handedly grown a sprawling forest on a 550-hectare sandbar in the middle of the Brahmaputra. It now has many endangered animals, including at least five tigers, one of which bore two cubs recently.
The place lies in Jorhat, some 350 km from Guwahati by road, and it wasn’t easy for Sunday Times to access him. At one point on the stretch, a smaller road has to be taken for some 30 km to reach the riverbank. There, if one is lucky, boatmen will ferry you across to the north bank. A trek of another 7 km will then land you near Payeng’s door. Locals call the place ‘Molai Kathoni’ (Molai’s woods) after Payeng’s pet name, Molai.
It all started way back in 1979 when floods washed a large number of snakes ashore on […]
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