Stephan: Although those of us in the developed nations take potable water for granted the fact is for several billion people it is a major matter of urgent stress. Here is a new technology that may help relieve this problem.
Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Biopolymer-reinforced synthetic granular nanocomposites for affordable point-of-use water purification, PNAS, Published online before print May 6, 2013, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1220222110
Researchers at India’s Institute of Technology Madras have developed a new kind of portable water purification system based on nanoparticle filtration. In their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team explains how their new device does its job-it employs nanoparticles to remove not just biological hazards, but toxic heavy metals as well.
The researchers note that access to clean drinking water is still a major worldwide problem-making it available to everyone, they say, would save approximately 2 million lives a year (approximately 42.6 percent of deaths are due to diarrhea alone and impact mostly children). To help reach the UN millennium development goal of doubling the number of people with sustainable access to safe drinking water by 2015, the team has been applying nanoparticle technology to the problem.
The system they have developed is a two-stage filtration process that provides 10 liters of clean water in just an hour’s time. The biggest challenge, the team says, was figuring out how to deliver silver ions into the water to be processed, without using any electricity. The process also had to use a minimal amount of silver ions to meet international safety standards. The answer, they say, was […]
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JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ, PHD, Nobel Laureate Economist - Project Syndicate
Stephan: Here in a very clear exegetic essay Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz spells out the whole sordid story of the attempt by corporations to patent and own life forms.
NEW YORK — The United States Supreme Court recently began deliberations in a case that highlights a deeply problematic issue concerning intellectual-property rights. The Court must answer the following question: Can human genes – your genes – be patented? Put another way, should someone essentially be permitted to own the right, say, to test whether you have a set of genes that imply a higher than 50% probability of developing breast cancer?
To those outside the arcane world of intellectual-property rights, the answer seems obvious: No. You own your genes. A company might own, at most, the intellectual property underlying its genetic test; and, because the research and development needed to develop the test may have cost a considerable amount, the firm might rightly charge for administering it.
But a Utah-based company, Myriad Genetics, claims more than that. It claims to own the rights to any test for the presence of the two critical genes associated with breast cancer – and has ruthlessly enforced that right, though their test is inferior to one that Yale University was willing to provide at much lower cost. The consequences have been tragic: Thorough, affordable testing that identifies high-risk patients saves lives. Blocking such testing costs […]
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REBECCA LEBER, - Climate Progress
Stephan: I have written extensively about the bias of the media and, particularly, the use of false equivalencies. (For a discussion of this see my esssay: False Equivalencies and the Mediocrity of Nonlocal Consciousness Research Criticism: http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2813%2900059-1/fulltext). Here is proof of my argument.
Click through to see the charts which accompany this piece. They will appall you when you see how incredibly compromised American corporate media has become.
Major news outlets often mislead readers by failing to report the fossil fuel funding of the conservative think tanks they cite and quote, according to a new study from the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Journalists commonly cited eight groups with known oil, gas, and coal funding: The American Enterprise Institute, Americans for Prosperity, Cato Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland Institute, Heritage Foundation, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and Institute for Energy Research (and its arm American Energy Alliance).
In total, they were cited 357 times, but outlets identified their funding from the Koch brothers, American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil, or General Motors a mere one-third of the time:
Based on a Nexus search, UCS’s Elliott Negin found the rate of reporting varies widely across outlets: Politico and the Los Angeles Times, and the Associated Press disclosed funding over 40 percent of the time. The two largest papers in the country, USA Today and Wall Street Journal (owned by Rupert Murdoch), disclosed this information the least. And if Koch Industries succeeds in its bid for the Los Angeles Times, along with seven other major papers, it is possible the average will drop even more.
By not disclosing what exactly fuels myths about climate change science and […]
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Wednesday, May 15th, 2013
Stephan: You have probably noticed, if you have thought about it at all, that you haven't seen the usual aerial video of the Mayflower, Arkansas Tar Sands Spill. The story has passed from public awareness. Why? Carbon energy special interests learned from the BP catastrophe that it is the images that damn them. Their solution: Don't allow those videos to be made. In television no images no ongoing story.
It is a measure of the grotesque corruption of the American government, that a company like Exxon can pull this off.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has had a ‘no fly zone’ in place in Mayflower, Arkansas since April 1 at 2:12 PM and will be in place ‘until further notice,’ according to the FAA website and it’s being overseen by ExxonMobil itself. In other words, any media or independent observers who want to witness the tar sands spill disaster have to ask Exxon’s permission.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette revealed that the FAA site noted earlier today that ‘only relief aircraft operations under direction of Tom Suhrhoff’ were allowed within the designated no fly zone.
Suhrhoff is not an FAA employee: he works for ExxonMobil as an ‘Aviation Advisor’ and formerly worked as a U.S. Army pilot for 24 years, according to his LinkedIn page.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has had a ‘no fly zone’ in place in Mayflower, Arkansas since April 1 at 2:12 PM and will be in place ‘until further notice,’ according to the FAA website and it’s being overseen by ExxonMobil itself. In other words, any media or independent observers who want to witness the tar sands spill disaster have to ask Exxon’s permission.
Mayflower is the site of the recent major March 29 ExxonMobil Pegagus tar sands pipeline spill, which […]
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Wednesday, May 15th, 2013
CHRISTOPHER ELLIOTT, - The Washington Post
Stephan: Increasingly I think we are going insane as a society. The worship of profit is our real religion, and it is consuming us.
It isn’t shaping up to be a good summer for air travelers who are trying to stick to a budget. And let’s be honest: Who isn’t watching his bottom line?
A few weeks before the traditional start of the busy travel season, United Airlines quietly raised its change fees on most discount fares from $150 to $200, rendering many of its tickets all but unchangeable.
American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and US Airways quickly followed.
Not to be outdone, Frontier Airlines announced that for tickets booked anywhere except on its Web site, it would raise its luggage charges and impose a fee of up to $100 for certain carry-on bags, the third U.S. carrier to do this. Most economy-class passengers will also have to pay $1.99 for coffee, tea, soda and juice.
You read correctly: That fee is for a carry-on bag, not a checked bag.
The moves provoked an immediate outcry from fee-weary passengers, who accused the now-profitable airline industry of making a money grab just as the vacation season begins. But a closer look at their frustrations shows that their options for fighting these new surcharges are limited.
‘Airlines have crossed the line and will continue to cross the line, whether it be change […]
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