Tag Archives: research

10 Tips for Protecting Your Jewelry from Thieves

Keeping valuables safe from potential thieves is one situation that should be considered with much thought. Link : http://www.homealarmmonitoring.org/year/10-tips-for-protecting-your-jewelry-from… added by: AngelAlina

Electronic Cigarettes Still Pose Serious Health Risks

Touted as a safe substitute to highly addictive tobacco products, research has shown that electronic cigarettes are unsafe, and might soon be removed from the market. Last week, the University of California, Riverside announced that e-cigarettes are potentially harmful to users' health, and urged regulators to consider removing e-cigarettes from the market until their safety is adequately evaluated. Instead of burning tobacco like normal cigarettes, e-cigarettes vaporize the nicotine, along with other compounds present in the cartridge, in the form of aerosol created by heating. While this eliminates the thousands of chemicals and toxicants created by tobacco combustion, there are still chemicals present in the aerosolized vapors emanating from e-cigarettes. Concerned that e-cigarettes, also called “electronic nicotine delivery systems,” might not be as safe as they appear, UCR researchers evaluated five of the most popular brands on the market. What They Found: 1. Batteries, atomizers, cartridges, cartridge wrappers, packs and instruction manuals lack important information regarding e-cigarette content, use and essential warnings. 2. E-cigarette cartridges leak, which could expose nicotine, an addictive and dangerous chemical, to children, adults, pets and the environment. 3. There are no methods for proper disposal of e-cigarettes products and accessories, which could result in nicotine contamination from discarded cartridges entering water sources and soil, and adversely impacting the environment. “Some people believe that e-cigarettes are a safe substitute for conventional cigarettes,” said Prue Talbot, the director of UC Riverside's Stem Cell Center, whose lab led the research. “However, there are virtually no scientific studies on e-cigarettes and their safety. Our study – one of the first studies to evaluate e-cigarettes – shows that this product has many flaws, which could cause serious public health problems in the future if the flaws go uncorrected.” http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2010/10/22/tc.2010.037259.abstract added by: Radical_Centrist

Past Flu Exposure Exacerbates Susceptibility To Flu Virus

When our body is exposed to certain threats, a certain cell in our body copies the proteins of the virus or strain that causes the illness hence creates a special defense that will protect our body from future same disease affliction.However, in the case of seasonal influenza, our body is not able to produce a Past Flu Exposure Exacerbates Susceptibility To Flu Virus is a post from: Daily World Buzz Continue reading

Quality of Life is for Corporate Owners, not you.

“We're producing almost as much as we did before the recession, with 7.5 million less people,” said Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of Economic Cycle Research Institute. “The difference is going into the productivity numbers and corporate profits.” The latest reading on productivity, which measures the economic output of each hour Americans work during a quarter, was up 2.5% from a year ago in the third quarter, the Labor Department reported this week. It's the sixth straight quarter of gains of that level or higher. But that level of productivity can't go on forever, said Achuthan. “There is a limit. Workers do start to push back,” he said. “But business managers don't hire because they're nice guys or girls, they hire because they're scared that they'll lose business to someone else. That'll be what gets hiring done.” http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/03/news/economy/employers_doing_more_with_less/?ire… added by: Swisher

Angelina Jolie Hits Backs Against Bosnian War Movie Criticism

‘There’s one person who has a gripe,’ actress says of war victim’s complaint. By Eric Ditzian Angelina Jolie Photo: Toni Passig/ WireImage After initially seeking to ease tensions with a Bosnian women’s group that has raised concerns over Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut , the actress has now spoken out against the group’s leader and called her worries out of touch with mainstream opinion. The Women Victims of War and its leader, Bakira Hasecic, have been speaking out against Jolie’s untitled film — and a purported storyline in which a rape victim falls in love with her captor on the eve of the 1992 war — leading this week to Hasecic’s declaration that she intended to file a complaint with the United Nations refugee agency. Speaking with Reuters in Paris, Jolie hit back against the criticism. “There’s one person who has a gripe,” Jolie said. “The absolute majority of the people, population, the cast, prime minister, president have been extremely supportive,” she explained, adding that the vast majority of the film’s crew had lived through the war, which lasted from 1992 to 1995. In October, Jolie struck a much more conciliatory tone regarding Women Victims of War’s concerns, saying in a statement, “My hope is that people will hold judgment until they have seen the film.” But after Hasecic’s group filed a complaint with the UN, for which Jolie is a goodwill ambassador, the actress-turned-director has become more pointed in defending herself. Previously, a rep for Jolie denied the movie contained any plotline about a rape victim falling in love with her rapist. In her October statement, Jolie said, “There are many twists in the plot that address the sensitive nature of the relationship between the main characters, and that will be revealed once the film is released.” Jolie told Reuters she initially planned to pen a screenplay focusing on the often delayed international response to international conflicts, but that her research led her to focus on the former Yugoslavia. “It kept leaning toward Yugoslavia at the time, I wanted to learn more about it and the people, the more I read and learnt, I was drawn to that part of the world,” she explained. “I met artists from that part of the world and found they were extraordinary for what they’d gone through, so I wanted to give them a platform.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com .

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Angelina Jolie Hits Backs Against Bosnian War Movie Criticism

What Is Distributed Power Generation?

Image credit: Electric Power Systems Research 57 (2001) 195-204 ; Ackermann et. al. My recent claim of ‘distributed power’ being inherently superior created some controversy. As did my claim that distributed power was a more useful and important concept than ‘green power,’ per se. (See: Decision Time: Invest In Distributed, Versus Central Power & More High Voltage Transmiss… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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What Is Distributed Power Generation?

Ultra Elitist Environmental Group: Halt Economic Growth, Institute Rationing

Ultra elitist environmental group The Royal Society has published a series of papers to coincide with the latest round of UN climate talks, in which influential scientists suggest that politicians should force the population of the developed world to adhere to a system of rationing in order to stave off rising global temperatures. The papers suggest that 1930s and 40s style crisis rationing should be implemented by Western governments in order to reduce carbon emissions. Such a move would see “limits on electricity so people are forced to turn the heating down, turn off the lights and replace old electrical goods like huge fridges with more efficient models. Food that has travelled from abroad may be limited and goods that require a lot of energy to manufacture.” the London Telegraph Reports. “The Second World War and the concept of rationing is something we need to seriously consider if we are to address the scale of the problem we face,” one Royal Society affiliated professor states. Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, added that in his view, economic growth in the developed world should be completely halted within the next two decades if the planet is to avoid mass upheaval in the form of rising sea levels, floods, droughts and mass migration. “I am not saying we have to go back to living in caves,” he said. “Our emissions were a lot less ten years ago and we got by ok then.” Ironically, Anderson’s point here reveals a fundamental flaw in the theory of anthropogenic warming, namely that CO2 emissions have increased, yet temperature rise is slowing. By all accounts, the warming trend observed predominantly throughout the 1980s and 90s stopped just over a decade ago. Even the Royal Society itself was forced to admit this fact in a recently published guide, titled ‘Climate change: a summary of the science’ which was altered following multiple complaints from 43 of the Royal Society’s own members that “knowledgeable people” were seeing through brazenly alarmist climate change rhetoric. The Met office concurs that global warming has been slowing for some time, and the admission was also recently noted by Professor Phil Jones, the figure at the head of the Climategate scandal. It is hardly surprising to see the Royal Society still pushing a de-industrialization agenda, however, given it’s history and cadre of members and patrons. The Royal Society, a 350 year old establishment outfit, has traditionally been the most vocal proponent for the hypothesis of AGW. It was the former president of The Royal Society, Lord May, who made the infamous statement “The debate on climate change is over.” When he was head of the Society, May told government advisors: “On one hand, you have the entire scientific community and on the other you have a handful of people, half of them crackpots.” The Royal Society has thrown its full weight behind the global warming movement, lending its absolute support for legislation aimed at reducing carbon emissions by 80%, a process that will devastate the global economy and drastically reduce living standards everywhere. It has been even more vehement than national governments in its advocacy of the man-made cause of global warming, calling for such drastic CO2 cuts to be made in the short term, not even by the usual target date of 2050. Not surprising then that The Royal Society was also intimately tied to efforts to Whitewash the Climategate emails scandal. The society has also conducted extensive research into geoengineering the planet, and continually lobbies the government to divert funding into it. A recently published lengthy UK Government report drew heavily upon the Society’s research and concluded that a global body such as the UN should be appointed to exclusively regulate world wide geoengineering of the planet in order to stave off man made global warming. This information becomes even more disturbing when you consider the mindset of those who make up the membership of the Society. It is riddled with renowned eco-fascists, open eugenicists and depopulation fanatics. One notable member is James Lovelock, an eco-fascist who advocates ending democracy and instituting an authoritative elite to oversee global climate management and a radical stemming of the human population in order to combat climate change. He is also a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, a notorious UK-based public policy group that campaigns for a gradual decline in the global human population, which it refers to as “primates” or “animals”, to what it sees as a “sustainable” level. Lovelock is also an ardent advocate of geoengineering. In 2007 Lovelock proposed laying vast swathes of pipes under the world’s oceans in order to pump water from the bottom of the seas – rich in nutrients, but mostly dead – to the top. The idea being that the action would encourage algae to breed, absorb more carbon and release more dimethyl sulphide into the atmosphere, a chemical known to seed sunlight reflecting clouds. Such methods are also covered in the Commons report. Another member is Jonathon Porritt, former chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, one of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s leading green advisers, who has stated that Britain’s population must be cut in half from around 60 million to 30 million if it is to build a sustainable society. Porritt, also a member of the Optimum Population Trust, a connection that caused raised eyebrows when it was announced that Porritt was to be a part of a forthcoming Royal Society“Objective” Global Population Study. Also on the Royal Society’s working group for their global population study is another of their patrons, and another OPT member, BBC darling wildlife broadcaster and film-maker Sir David Attenborough. Attenborough has called for a one child policy like that of Communist China to be implemented in Britain. The proposal is one of the OPT’s main initiatives. Again, how is this man’s influence going to result in an “objective” study on population? Another member of that working group is Cambridge economist Sir Partha Dasgupta, also a fellow of the OPT. Professor Malcolm Potts, another member of the working group was the first male doctor at the Marie Stopes Abortion Clinic in London, he also advised on the UK’s 1967 Abortion Act. Marie Stopes was a prominent campaigner for the implementation of eugenicspolicies. In Radiant Motherhood (1920) she called for the “sterilisation of those totally unfit for parenthood [to] be made an immediate possibility, indeed made compulsory.” That group, according to her, included non-whites and the poor. Stopes, an anti-Semite Nazi sympathizer, campaigned for selective breeding to achieve racial purity, a passion she shared with Adolf Hitler in adoring letters and poems that she sent the leader of the Third Reich. Stopes also attended the Nazi congress on population science in Berlin in 1935, while calling for the “compulsory sterilization of the diseased, drunkards, or simply those of bad character.” Stopes acted on her appalling theories by concentrating her abortion clinics in poor areas so as to reduce the birth rate of the lower classes. Stopes left most of her estate to the Eugenics Society, an organization that shared her passion for racial purity and still exists today under the new name The Galton Institute. The society has included members such as Charles Galton Darwin (grandson of the evolutionist), Julian Huxley and Margaret Sanger. Read More: http://globalpoliticalawakening.blogspot.com/2010/11/ultra-elitist-environmental… added by: GLOBALPOLITICAL

Most Support DADT Repeal, But Tea Party Opposed

A survey released Monday finds strong support for allowing openly gay and lesbian soldiers to serve in the military, but key groups that traditionally support Republicans oppose the idea. The survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, shows that 58% of adults favor allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly, whereas 27% said they opposed allowing it. A majority of both men and women, as well as both Democrats and independents also support allowing open service. Currently, gays and lesbians are permitted to serve in the military under the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy only if they do not publicly reveal their sexuality. According the poll, Republicans are divided on whether to allow open service by gays and lesbians — 40% of Republicans favor it and 44% oppose. Perhaps as important, key groups likely to have an influence on Republican policies are even more opposed to allowing open service. The Pew report notes that among those who said they “agree with the Tea Party” only 38% favor and 48% oppose allowing open servece. Similarly, only 34% of white evangelical Protestants favor and 48% oppose allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly. Lack of Republican support could prevent the Obama administration from ending the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, especially if Congress doesn't vote on ending the policy before the end of this year's lame-duck session. Ending the policy during a lame-duck session may not be popular even if a majority do support repeal, however — a recent McClatchy Company poll by Marist College found that registered voters were divided on repealing the policy during the current Congress, with 47% saying the current Democratic Congress should repeal the policy and 48% saying they should not repeal it “so they continue to serve but not openly.” Another recent poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal found that 50% of adults supported allowing open service but 48% either supported continuing the current policy or not permitting service at all when explicitly offered those options. The Pew poll was conducted Nov. 4-7 among 1,255 adults, and had a 3.5% margin of error. Results among subgroups have a higher margin of error. added by: TimALoftis

Why Do Mexican Workers Head North?

Timothy Wise: Mexican agriculture was undermined by NAFTA and companies like Smithfield. Bio Timothy A. Wise is Director of the Research and Policy Program at the Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University, and leads its Globalization and Sustainable Development Program. With a background in international development, he specializes in agricultural policy and rural development. He is involved in ongoing research in the areas of: Sustainable Rural Development, Beyond Agricultural Subsidies, Mexico Under NAFTA, WTO and Global Trade. He is the co-author of the book (in English and Spanish), Confronting Globalization: Economic Integration and Popular Resistance in Mexico, and The Promise and the Perils of Agricultural Trade Liberalization: Lessons from Latin America. He is the former executive director of Grassroots International, a Boston-based international aid organization. He holds a Masters in Public Policy from Tufts' Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning Department. added by: treewolf39

Climate change descends on Bolivia while US politicians play dumb about it

One or two years of strange rainfall patterns could be just that, and may not be an indication of a larger, catastrophic pattern. But Bolivians, especially the elderly, are reminded daily of their changing climate by the dwindling glaciers on the mountains around them. Perhaps not surprisingly, the snow-capped Andes are sacred in pre-Columbian Andean religions. The Aymara empire extended across Bolivia's highlands for several hundred years before they were conquered by the Inca, and then the Spanish shortly thereafter. Both Aymara and Quechua (Inca) traditions live on today, with many Bolivians speaking indigenous languages first and Spanish as a second language or not at all. In the last half-century, these ancient peoples have seen many of their glaciers shrink or even disappear. Perhaps the starkest example is the glacier on Chacaltaya, a mountain near the capitol city of La Paz. Chacaltaya was once home to the world's highest (and Bolivia's only) ski resort, which was built in 1938. Between then and 2009, the glacier melted and entirely disappeared. As of 2009, the ski resort's operations became limited to a small area that sometimes receives snow. A travel Web site now boasts that, “it is still fun to visit this mountain whether or not you plan on skiing,” suggesting that visitors go hiking and take in the beautiful views of La Paz and Lake Titicaca. Of course, the loss of a ski resort is nothing compared to what else is at stake. Nor is Chacaltaya the only mountain with a glacier in jeopardy. The majority of Bolivia's population lives in the highlands, and they depend on the glaciers for drinking water, irrigation, and hydroelectric power. Climate scientist Lonnie Thompson has been studying Andean glaciers in Bolivia and Peru since the 1970s and during that time, he's witnessed the formation and disappearance of rivers and lakes as glaciers melt and water evaporates. “It doesn't matter which tropical glacier you look at,” he says, noting that 90 percent of the earth's tropical glaciers are found in Bolivia and Peru, “100 percent of them are retreating in today's world.” In the first 15 years Thompson researched the Oori Kalis glacier, Quelccaya's largest outlet glacier has been retreating about 10 times faster (approximately 60 meters per year) than during the initial measurement period from 1963 to 1978 when it was about six meters per year. The accelerating rate of retreat of the Qori Kalis terminus is consistent with the observations of glaciers throughout the Andes. Thompson worries about the Andean people who live among these melting glaciers (some of whom required the team of scientists to participate in a ceremonial sacrifice of a white alpaca to ask the gods' forgiveness for conducting their research on the sacred mountain). “These people are living on the edge of survival anyway, and of course they're the first to be influenced by changes in water resources,” says Thompson. cont. added by: JanforGore