ERIN FLEMMING, Business Reporter - The Seattle Times
Stephan: I hope this becomes a trend because it offers a major alternative to landfills.
PCC Natural Markets is unveiling Tuesday a new alternative for dealing with food waste at its Issaquah location.
For the past two years, the local grocery co-op has been working with WISErg, a Washington startup developing a ‘harvester’ machine to convert food waste into liquid fertilizer. All nine PCC locations will carry the fertilizer, a brown liquid the consistency of water.
Diana Crane, director of sustainability at PCC, said the co-op is testing the device and will soon decide whether to continue the partnership with WISErg.
She said the company was excited to participate in the pilot project.
‘There was no downside for us,’ she said. Once the harvester is commercially available, she said, ‘I think people will be beating down their doors.’
After working together at Microsoft, Jose Lugo and Larry LeSueur, co-founders of Issaquah-based WISErg, left in 2005 to independently pursue other projects. They both ended up looking into the possibilities of green projects involving anaerobic digestion - essentially composting without air.
In 2009, they reconnected through a mutual friend and formed WISErg, in the hopes of creating a new way to deal with food waste.
Similar anaerobic digesters have been used in agriculture and wastewater-treatment plants for years, but Lugo and LeSueur said they […]
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Stephan: This sounds loony, but the science is sound.
Giant dinosaurs could have warmed the planet with their flatulence, say researchers.
British scientists have calculated the methane output of sauropods, including the species known as Brontosaurus.
By scaling up the digestive wind of cows, they estimate that the population of dinosaurs – as a whole – produced 520 million tonnes of gas annually.
They suggest the gas could have been a key factor in the warm climate 150 million years ago.
David Wilkinson from Liverpool John Moore’s University, and colleagues from the University of London and the University of Glasgow published their results in the journal Current Biology.
Sauropods, such as Apatosaurus louise (formerly known as Brontosaurus), were super-sized land animals that grazed on vegetation during the Mesozoic Era.
For Dr Wilkinson, it was not the giants that were of interest but the microscopic organisms living inside them.
‘The ecology of microbes and their role in the working of our planet are one of my key interests in science,’ he told BBC Nature.
‘Although it’s the dinosaur element that captures the popular imagination with this work, actually it is the microbes living in the dinosaurs guts that are making the methane.’
Methane is known as a ‘greenhouse gas’ that absorbs infrared radiation from the sun, trapping it in […]
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Stephan: This is the first scientifically based explanation I have seen as to explain how people may see auras -- for which anecdotal accounts have existed for millennia. I am not sure this is all of it, but my intuition is that this research has a part of the answer.
Journal Reference:
E.G. Milán, O. Iborra, M. Hochel, M.A. RodrÃguez Artacho, L.C. Delgado-Pastor, E. Salazar, A. González-Hernández. Auras in mysticism and synaesthesia: A comparison. Consciousness and Cognition, 2012; 21 (1): 258 DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2011.11.010
Researchers in Spain have found that at least some of the individuals claiming to see the so-called aura of people actually have the neuropsychological phenomenon known as ‘synesthesia’ (specifically, ’emotional synesthesia’). This might be a scientific explanation of their alleged ability.
In synesthetes, the brain regions responsible for the processing of each type of sensory stimuli are intensely interconnected. Synesthetes can see or taste a sound, feel a taste, or associate people or letters with a particular color.
The study was conducted by the University of Granada Department of Experimental Psychology Óscar Iborra, Luis Pastor and Emilio Gómez Milán, and has been published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition. This is the first time that a scientific explanation has been provided for the esoteric phenomenon of the aura, a supposed energy field of luminous radiation surrounding a person as a halo, which is imperceptible to most human beings.
In basic neurological terms, synesthesia is thought to be due to cross-wiring in the brain of some people (synesthetes); in other words, synesthetes present more synaptic connections than ‘normal’ people. ‘These extra connections cause them to automatically establish associations between brain areas that are not normally interconnected,’ professor Gómez Milán explains. New research suggests that […]
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DANIEL J. DENOON, - WebMD
Stephan: Part of this obesity problem, I believe, arises from personal life styles. However, a large part also is the result of lifelong ingestion of foods that are processed and compromised by a wide range of hormones, antibiotics, toxins, and pollutants. It is very hard to eat a healthy diet in the United States without specialized knowledge and access to organic locally grown food -- something that is virtually impossible in large parts of the country both rural and urban. The result is massive increases in a wide range of diseases. The one thing that is accomplished by this system is that it is incredibly profitable for the few. Industrial agriculture wins, Big Pharma wins, the illness profit system in general wins. The only real loser is you, your family, and your children.
By 2030, 42% of Americans will be obese and 11% of Americans will be severely obese, Duke University and CDC researchers predict.
These shocking numbers actually are conservative, note study researchers Eric A. Finkelstein, PhD, and colleagues.
Finkelstein’s team based its calculations on self-reported weight and height from people participating in the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Obesity is defined by body mass index (BMI). People tend to underestimate their weight and overestimate their height. The researchers corrected for this. They also factored in state-by-state trends in factors affecting obesity, such as the number of fast-food restaurants per person and the cost of unhealthy, calorie-dense foods vs. healthy foods.
There’s some good news. The study suggests that adult obesity in the U.S. is leveling off, albeit at an unacceptably high level. Previous estimates suggested that 51% of Americans would be obese in 2030. But that figure may be too full, the new study finds.
Slimming Slideshow: 24 Ways to Lose Weight Without Dieting
Severe Obesity a Severe Problem
Whatever comfort that good news may bring is more than made up for by the finding that severe obesity — BMI of 40 or more — is skyrocketing. Severely obese people are at the highest risk […]
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BRAD JACOBSON, - Truthout.org
Stephan: Fukushima is far far from resolved and over. In fact people who actually know something about nuclear power and radioactivity are become increasingly agitated. In the blogosphere things are becoming ever more hysterical, but I have been looking in the scientific literature. Much of that is too technical to be easily comprehended, so I went looking for a reasonable exposition of the subject and found this. This is the more conservative view, and it is unsettling. That hasn't stopped nuclear corporate interests and their Rightist lackeys from continuing to push the nuclear industry on the country.
Experts say acknowledging the threat would call into question the safety of dozens of identically designed nuclear power plants in the U.S.
More than a year after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, the Japanese government, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) present similar assurances of the site’s current state: challenges remain but everything is under control. The worst is over.
But nuclear waste experts say the Japanese are literally playing with fire in the way nuclear spent fuel continues to be stored onsite, especially in reactor 4, which contains the most irradiated fuel — 10 times the deadly cesium-137 released during the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. These experts also charge that the NRC is letting this threat fester because acknowledging it would call into question safety at dozens of identically designed nuclear power plants around the U.S., which contain exceedingly higher volumes of spent fuel in similar elevated pools outside of reinforced containment.
Reactor 4: The Most Imminent Threat
The spent fuel in the hobbled unit 4 at Fukushima Daiichi not only sits in an elevated pool outside the reactor core’s reinforced containment, in a high-consequence earthquake zone adjacent to the ocean — just […]
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