Monday, September 7th, 2015
Gabrielle Canon, - Mother Jones
Stephan: Our failure to address our abuse of the Earth is not without cost to ourselves. As this story describes, we are literally making our children stupid with pollution. Think about that for a moment.
Credit: Shaun/Stock
A growing body of evidence suggests pollution can do a number on the brain. The July/August Mother Jones cover story chronicled the research connecting neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s to the dirty air we breathe; studies have found that pollution may also age the brain prematurely. And according to new research from the University of Texas-El Paso, pollution’s damage to the brain may start even sooner than was previously thought: Fourth and fifth graders exposed to exhaust emissions, researchers found, don’t do as well in school as their peers who breathe cleaner air.
The new findings suggest poor students might be at a greater disadvantage because of pollution levels near their homes.
Using the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Air Toxics Assessment, researchers estimated how often children were exposed to air pollution in their homes. They then compared that data with the academic performance of close to 1,900 kids enrolled in the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD)—an area prone to high levels of pollution.
Adjusting for other factors […]
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Monday, September 7th, 2015
Stephen Hanley, - Planetsave
Stephan: I have always considered solar panels to be a clunky intermediate step in photovoltaics, believing that buildings would soon have PV generating power built into the technology of the house. It's coming. And soon.
photovoltaic window glass.
Credit: Solaria; Solar Window Technologies
Imagine if every building in the world had solar power windows that could generate a small amount of electricity from the sun. The technology exists. It has been tested and it is ready for production. In Manhattan alone, there are 47,000 buildings with over 10,700,000 windows, according to a 2013 estimate from The New York Times.
Transparency Versus Efficiency
The first challenge for researchers is to make the solar power windows transparent. “No one wants to sit behind colored glass,” Richard Lunt, an assistant professor of chemical engineering and materials science at Michigan State University. “It makes for a very colorful environment, like working in a disco.”
Lunt and his team have developed a new type of transparent luminescent solar concentrator (TLSC) that creates solar energy when it is placed over a window. MSU’s technology can not only be used on windows for building but also on cell phones and any other device that has a clear, uncolored surface. “We take an approach where we actually […]
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Sunday, September 6th, 2015
Lorraine Chow, - Alternet (U.S.)
Stephan: The GMO struggle continues.
Two more European countries are rejecting genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Latvia and Greece have specifically said no to growing Monsanto‘s genetically modified maize, or MON810, that’s widely grown in America and Asia but is the only variety grown in Europe.
Lativia and Greece have chosen the “opt-out” clause of a European Union rule passed in March that allows member countries to abstain from growing GM crops, even if they are authorized by the EU. Scotland and Germany also made headlines in recent weeks for seeking a similar ban on GMOs.
According to Reuters, in many European countries, there is widespread criticism against the agribusiness giant’s pest-resistant crops, claiming that GM-cultivation threatens biodiversity.
Monsanto said it would abide by Latvia’s and Greece’s request to not grow the crops. The company, however, accused the two countries of ignoring science and refusing GMOs out of “arbitrary political grounds.”
In a statement, Monsanto said that the move from the two countries “contradicts and undermines the scientific consensus on the safety of MON810.”
Monsanto also told Reuters that since the growth of […]
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Sunday, September 6th, 2015
Renee Lewis , Reporter - Aljazeera America
Stephan: The Canadian Supreme Court has cleared the way for a trial against Chevron, one of the world's major petroleum polluters, and it could have billion dollar consequences.
I guess I hardly need to mention this story has near zero coverage in American corporate media.
Canadian Supreme Court
Credit: www.thestar.com
Canada’s Supreme Court ruled Friday that Ecuadorian villagers and indigenous communities could sue Chevron Corporation in the Canadian province of Ontario over a decades-long contamination that environmentalists have dubbed the “Amazon Chernobyl.”
The plaintiffs, who include about 30,000 villagers and indigenous people, decided to go after the energy giant’s assets in Canada, Brazil and Argentina after the company contested a ruling by Ecuador’s highest court to pay $9.5 billion to clean up the contamination site.
Communities in the Lago Agrio region of Ecuador allege that Texaco, which was acquired by Chevron in 2001, dumped some 16 billion tons of oil and toxic waste in the Amazon rainforest as a cost-saving measure between 1964 and 1992, Telesur reported. That’s 80 times the amount of oil spilled in the 2010 British Petroleum Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, the Latin American news website added.
Ecuadorian villagers and indigenous communities affected by the contamination allege that it has resulted in illness and death, Telesur reported in June, and that they are still suffering the consequences of Texaco’s actions.
Plaintiffs claim that […]
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Sunday, September 6th, 2015
Stephan: This year’s SAT scores,
released this week by the College Board, are the lowest since the test was redesigned a decade ago, while ACT stores have remained mostly flat," this report tell us. It is increasingly clear that America's educational system, once the envy of the world, has gone seriously off the rails from top to bottom. One reason almost certainly is the privatization movement, and President Bush's No Child Left Behind nonsense.
A more diverse pool of kids is taking the SAT than ever before.
Credit: Devrim PINAR/Shutterstock
The College Board, which administers the SAT college entrance exam, has been in the news a lot lately, as more and more higher-education institutions, most recently George Washington University, are adopting “test-optional” admissions policies, engineered to draw a wider pools of applicants. At the same time, 14 states have started requiring all eleventh-graders to take the SAT instead of a more localized Common Core–aligned achievement test. This summer, Connecticut and New Hampshire became the latest states to require the SAT and offer it for free—an effort both to cut back on the number of tests administered, since it will count toward the high-school testing requirement mandated by No Child Left Behind, and to give more students a shot at enrolling in college.
And yet. Even as (or perhaps because) […]
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