In a major national security speech this spring, President Obama said again and again that the U.S. is at war with ‘Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces.
As we’ve written before, the mysterious mass die-off of honey bees that pollinate $30 billion worth of crops in the US has so decimated America’s apis mellifera population that one bad winter could leave fields fallow. Now, a new study has pinpointed some of the probable causes of bee deaths and the rather scary results show that averting beemageddon will be much more difficult than previously thought.
Scientists had struggled to find the trigger for so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that has wiped out an estimated 10 million beehives, worth $2 billion, over the past six years. Suspects have included pesticides, disease-bearing parasites and poor nutrition. But in a first-of-its-kind study published today in the journal PLOS ONE, scientists at the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture have identified a witch’s brew of pesticides and fungicides contaminating pollen that bees collect to feed their hives. The findings break new ground on why large numbers of bees are dying though they do not identify the specific cause of CCD, where an entire beehive dies at once.
When researchers collected pollen from hives on the east coast pollinating cranberry, watermelon and other crops and fed it to healthy bees, those bees […]
Even before Edward Snowden’s revelations, many people suspected that spooks like those at America’s National Security Agency could pry into their electronic lives. Most were not worried enough to do anything about it. But political dissidents in authoritarian countries, and a hypervigiliant few in the West, have long tried to outwit the NSA and its counterparts in other countries. One favourite tool is The Onion Router, or TOR, a system which disguises the provenance of communications by rerouting them cleverly around the web. The New Yorker, among other media firms, uses TOR to help whistleblowers submit information anonymously.
But TOR is not perfect. Careful analysis of message timing, or the sort of traffic analysis made possible by the NSA’s enormous dragnet, may allow the spooks to penetrate the fog and pin down a user’s identity, even if they cannot read the messages themselves. Indeed, rumours have long swirled that the intelligence agencies run TOR nodes of their own, the better to keep tabs on its users. Happily, more help for the security-conscious whistleblower may now be at hand, in the form of AdLeaks, a system proposed by Völker Roth of the Free University in Berlin, in a paper posted to the […]
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Fewer Americans aged 18 to 29 worked full time for an employer in June 2013 (43.6%) than did so in June 2012 (47.0%), according to Gallup’s Payroll to Population employment rate. The P2P rate for young adults is also down from 45.8% in June 2011 and 46.3% in June 2010.
June U.S. Payroll to Population Employment Rates Among Younger Americans, 2010-2013
These results are based on Gallup Daily tracking interviews, conducted by landline and cellphone, with approximately 30,000 Americans each month. Gallup’s P2P rate measures the percentage of the U.S. adult population that is employed full time by an employer for at least 30 hours per week. Gallup does not seasonally adjust P2P, so same-month comparisons from year to year provide the best insight into how the trend is changing over time.
Younger Americans Less Likely to Have Full-Time Work Now, Regardless of Education
Currently, Americans aged 18 to 29 who have at least a college degree are nearly twice as likely (65.4%) as their counterparts without a degree (38.6%) to have a full-time job. This difference likely reflects the benefits of a college education in today’s job market. However, it is also likely that some young adults without a degree […]
The clean-up after the Fukushima nuclear disaster could cost five times more than estimated, figures have revealed, as Tokyo Electric Power said on Wednesday that steam had been seen again in a reactor building.
It is the third time steam has been observed in the battered structure over the last week.
The government-backed National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology said decontamination work in Fukushima prefecture will cost up to 5.81 trillion yen ($58 billion), far more than the 1 trillion yen the government has so far allocated.
The institute, in a report released Tuesday, said the costs - including for transportation and storage of radiation-contaminated soil over a large area - would be in a range between 3.13 trillion yen and 5.81 trillion yen.
‘We hope the study will be helpful in drafting plans for decontamination of forests and farmland, as well as plans for residents to return to their homes,
