Representative John Dingell (D-MI), the longest-sitting member of Congress, introduced a bill Thursday designed to force the Supreme Court to reconsider its Citizens United decision. Along with at least ten co-sponsors, Dingell’s Restoring Confidence in Our Democracy Act, would ban corporations and unions from making independent political expenditures. It would also subject Super PACs to the same contribution limits that exist with other PACs. Dingell intends the bill to provide ‘the factual record which details the negative effects of increased spending in our elections.’ That factual record, he hopes, will get the Court to reverse itself, and restore Congress’ power to limit a form of spending that Dingell (rightly) believes has eroded even further America’s ‘confidence’ in ‘our democracy.’

Dingell’s bill, however, is effectively two bills– one that would require the Court to reverse itself, if indeed the new law were upheld, and the other that would not require the Court to reverse itself but would instead give the Court a chance to address a kind of corruption that so far the Supreme Court has ignored. It is unlikely (in the extreme) that the Court is going to reverse itself. But if framed properly, Dingell’s bill could well map a way […]

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LINCOLN, Neb. — Thousands of fish are dying in the Midwest as the hot, dry summer dries up rivers and causes water temperatures to climb in some spots to nearly 100 degrees.

About 40,000 shovelnose sturgeon were killed in Iowa last week as water temperatures reached 97 degrees. Nebraska fishery officials said they’ve seen thousands of dead sturgeon, catfish, carp, and other species in the Lower Platte River, including the endangered pallid sturgeon. And biologists in Illinois said the hot weather has killed tens of thousands of large- and smallmouth bass and channel catfish and is threatening the population of the greater redhorse fish, a state-endangered species.

So many fish died in one Illinois lake that the carcasses clogged an intake screen near a power plant, lowering water levels to the point that the station had to shut down one of its generators.

‘It’s something I’ve never seen in my career, and I’ve been here for more than 17 years,’ said Mark Flammang, a fisheries biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. ‘I think what we’re mainly dealing with here are the extremely low flows and this unparalleled heat.’

The fish are victims of one of the driest and warmest summers in history. […]

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One Louisiana school is dealing with the state’s high rates of teen pregnancy by taking an ‘out of sight, out of mind

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An international collaboration led by physicists of the University of Vienna shines new light on the question of the resources required for achieving quantum information processing. The scientists demonstrate that less demanding resources, which are easier to prepare and to control, can be used for quantum-enhanced technologies. In the experiment, which is published in Nature Physics, the researchers achieve remote quantum state preparation without requiring entanglement as a resource.

A fundamental characteristic of quantum physics is the fact that two or more particles can exhibit correlations stronger than classically allowed. This unique characteristic applies particularly to quantum entanglement: as soon as the quantum state of a particle is measured the state of its entangled partner changes accordingly, regardless of how far apart the two entangled particles might be. This feature allows for the remote quantum state preparation, which is an essential ingredient for applications in quantum communication, quantum cryptography, and quantum computation. The degree of entanglement is often used as a figure of merit for determining its usefulness for quantum technologies. Strongly entangled systems, however, are very sensitive to extrinsic influence and difficult to prepare and to control. A team of researchers headed by the physicists Caslav Brukner (theory) and Philip […]

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Minor earthquakes have occurred far more frequently in the Barnett Shale than previously reported, and most took place near high-volume injection wells, according to a University of Texas study of local seismic activity.

The study, released Monday by Cliff Frohlich, senior research scientist at UT’s Institute for Geophysics, is the latest academic effort to determine whether any aspect of natural gas drilling causes earthquakes.

Frohlich’s report doesn’t find any direct link between hydraulic fracturing and earthquakes. But it adds to concerns that injection wells, where wastewater from fracking and production is pumped back into the ground, can cause increased seismic activity.

A June report by the National Research Council also said earthquake risks are higher near injection wells.

The UT study reviewed data from temporary seismographs placed in the Barnett Shale under the USArray program from November 2009 to September 2011.

‘I analyzed these data and located 67 earthquakes, more than eight times as many as reported by the National Earthquake Information Center,’ Frohlich said in his report, to be published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Most of the epicenters were within two miles of one or more injection wells, Frohlich reported. ‘These included wells near Dallas-Fort Worth and Cleburne,’ he wrote, ‘where […]

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