Saturday, April 22nd, 2017
Stephan: Another marijuana prohibition myth bites the dust
Credit: Vince Chandler / The Denver Post
Far fewer people in Colorado are getting citations for driving under the influence of marijuana than in 2016, but officials are still worried about people driving high.
In the first quarter of 2017, the number of marijuana DUIs dropped by 33.2% from the same period last year, according to the Colorado State Patrol. From January to March of this year, 155 people received citations for marijuana-use-only impairment while driving in Colorado, the Denver Post reports, compared to 232 people in 2016.
“We’re still troubled by the fact that marijuana users are still telling us they routinely drive high,” Colorado Department of Transportation spokesman Sam Cole said Monday, according to the Post. “We’re pleased with the awareness, but we’re not so pleased with the behaviors that are actually happening.”
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Jess Shankleman , Tino Andresen , and Mathew Carr , - Bloomberg
Stephan: America is going one way, and most of the rest of the world is going another. As it plays out, my prediction is that unless there is immediate and massive change toward social wellbeing -- which I think unlikely -- the net-net will be the diminishment of the United States. Indeed as I look at social outcome trends that are taking shape under Trump, the reduction of America's importance in the world is the principal geopolitical trend I discern.
The long goodbye for coal in Europe is accelerating as the cost of shifting to green energy plunges.
Companies including Drax Group Plc, Steag GmbH to Uniper SE are closing or converting coal-burning generators at a record pace from Austria to the U.K., made obsolete by competition from cheaper wind and solar power. After more than 500 years of using the carbonaceous rock — which fueled the industrial revolution even as emissions warmed the atmosphere — the continent simply can’t afford it anymore and is moving on.
“It’s an entirely different fuel-price world,” said Johannes Truby, an analyst at the Paris-based International Energy Agency. Since 2012, the agency has cut its outlook for European Union coal use in 2030 by 12 percent and now expects just 114 gigawatts of capacity will remain by then, compared with 177 gigawatts in 2014, the latest annual data available.
Countries including the U.K., France, Portugal, Austria and Finland are phasing out coal with policies in place to end […]
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Jane Palmer , - digg/Mosaic
Stephan: It is beginning to look like we are facing another epidemic resulting from climate change. The best epidemiological data I see suggests to me that as the climate changes we are going to see more and more such developments.
A mysterious kidney disease is striking down laborers across the world and climate change is making it worse. Jane Palmer meets the doctors who are trying to understand it and stop it.
Credit: Brett Gundlock/Boreal Collective
By 10am in the sugarcane fields outside the town of Tierra Blanca in El Salvador, the mercury is already pushing 31°C. The workers arrived at dawn: men and women, young and old, wearing thick jeans, long-sleeved shirts and face scarves to prevent being scorched by the sun’s rays. They are moving quickly between rows of cane, bending, reaching, clipping and trimming in preparation for harvesting the crop in the weeks to come. In the scant shade, old Pepsi and Fanta bottles full of water swing from tree branches, untouched. Gulping only the thick air, the workers won’t stop until noon, when their shift is over.
Among them is 25-year-old Jesús Linares. His dream, he explains in English, was to be a language teacher, but like many Salvadoran children he went to work to […]
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Kyle Mizokam, - Popular Mechanics
Stephan: Stories like this just make me crazy. As I read them all I can think about are the millions of children and elders who live in a constant state of food insecurity, never sure there will be something to eat at the next mealtime, and often there isn't
Credit: U.S. Marine Corps/ Lance Cpl. Molly Hampton.
The CH-53K King Stallion, the Marine Corps’ latest heavy-lift helicopter, is finally ready for production. After years of development, it will relieve the Corps’ 40-year-old CH-53E. Just one problem: The King Stallions will end up costing $138.5 million apiece—even more expensive than the notoriously costly F-35.
The CH-53 series dates back to the 1960s, when they were used by the Marine Corps in Vietnam and the Air Force for combat search and rescue. The current edition, CH-53E Super Stallion, was introduced in 1974 and still serves in the Marines today.
The latest upgrade is called the CH-53K King Stallion and can carry a 27,000-pound load slung underneath up to 110 miles in “high and hot” conditions (think Afghanistan). That’s enough lift to carry two armored Humvees or a LAV-25 light armored vehicle, and more than three times the capacity of its predecessor, the CH-53E. It can carry Humvees, two 20,000 pound pallets, or infantry internally. The helicopter […]
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Stephan:
I did an earlier story on this emerging technology, here is the follow up. This development has tremendous implications for areas where potable water is not easily available from the usual sources.
Water harvester built at MIT with MOFs from UC Berkeley. Using only sunlight, the harvester can pull liters of water from low-humidity air over a 12-hour period.
Credit: MIT / laboratory of Evelyn Wang.
A small, solar-powered device that pulls fresh water from the air? Scientists at MIT and UC Berkeley have created a prototype that does just that — and it only requires 20-30 percent humidity to work.
Professor Omar Yaghi, one of the senior scientists on the project, is calling the harvester “personalized water.” He envisions a future where water is supplied “off-grid, where you have a device at home running on ambient solar for delivering water that satisfies the needs of a household,” Yaghi said in a release.
Yaghi, a UC Berkeley chemistry professor, is also the inventor of the key element of the water harvester — metal-organic frameworks, or MOF. MOFs are compounds created by combining metals with organic molecules. The resulting materials can be highly absorbent, making […]
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