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Haitian Tragedy

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January 14, 2010 – 1:43 pm

Haitians piled heaps of lifeless bodies along the streets of their capital Wednesday after a massive earthquake wrecked thousands of structures. Untold numbers were still trapped. The Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation is devastated.

The earthquake which came on Tuesday afternoon was a magnitude-7.0. It was the biggest earthquake to happen in the Caribbean in 200 years.
President Rene Preval said in a panic:

“Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed…there are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.”

The Roman Catholic archbishop of Port-au-Prince was counted among the dead, and the head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission is still missing.

The Red Cross said a third of Haiti’s 9 million people will need emergency aid and it will take a couple of days for a clear picture of the damage to emerge.

Nations from all over the world are sending aid to the small island nation.

As aftershocks continued to rattle, people pulled bodies from collapsed homes, and covered them with sheets by the side of the road. Passers-by lifted the sheets to check if their loved ones were underneath.

Preval said that Haiti’s Senate president was among those trapped alive inside the Parliament building.

An American aid worker was trapped for about 10 hours under the rubble of her mission house before being rescued by her husband, who drove 100 miles (160 kilometers) to Port-au-Prince to find her. Frank Thorp said he dug for more than an hour to free his wife, Jillian, and a co-worker, from beneath a foot of concrete.

An estimated 40,000-45,000 Americans live in Haiti, and the U.S. Embassy had no confirmed reports of deaths among its citizens.

The U.N.’s 9,000 peacekeepers in Haiti, many of whom are from Brazil, were distracted away from aid efforts by their own tragedy: Many spent the night searching for survivors in the ruins of their headquarters.

The quake struck at 4:53 p.m., centered 10 miles (15 kilometers) west of Port-au-Prince at a depth of 5 miles (8 kilometers). U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) geophysicist Kristin Marano called it the strongest earthquake since 1770 in the area.

PLEASE HELP WITH DONATION TO HAITI – CLICK HERE!

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The Sixth Great Extinction

January 13, 2010 – 12:40 pm

The loss of biodiversity on the planet is becoming more and more of an ongoing tragedy. This means that the Earth’s once-balanced ecosystems are severely threatened. It is becoming an extreme extinction crisis, as human development and expansion causes various species to go extinct at a speed 1,000 times faster than the natural rate.
Many have termed the current period, ‘the sixth great extinction’. But instead of a natural event like an asteroid impact, to cause the irreversible damage, the fault lies with the development of human infrastructure and the expansion of farming and cities.

The Amazon and the Indonesian islands, namely, are suffering the most – but this is not to belittle the damage in other areas around the globe.
As a cure, the UN is set to launch the International Year of Biodiversity agenda.
They will suggest to non-believers to look at it in these terms:

“A large on-going UN-sponsored study into the economics of biodiversity suggests that deforestation alone costs the global economy $2-5 trillion each year.”

Here’s a list of eight tragically endangered species:

Kihansi Spray Toad

Addax

Sumatran Orangutan

Funcia di basilicu

Mediterranean Monk Seals

Vaquita

Rodrigues Flying Fox

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Pompous Pontiff or Planetary Protection Pirate:The Green Pope Takes on Copenhagen

January 12, 2010 – 12:45 pm

Pope Benedict XVI denounced the failure of world leaders to agree on a new climate change treaty in Copenhagen. According to him, world peace depends on protecting God’s creation.
Benedict has been dubbed the “green pope”, and fittingly so. Under his watch, the Vatican has installed photovoltaic cells on its main auditorium to convert sunlight into electricity and has joined a reforestation project aiming to offset its CO2 emissions.

For the pontiff, environmentalism is a moral issue: Church convictions hold that man must honor creation because it is destined for the benefit of humanity’s future.
The Copenhagen summit set up the first significant program of ensuring aid to help poor nations cope with the effects of a changing climate. However, while the accord urged deeper cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, it did nothing to demand them.

The pontiff is disappointed but hopeful. He said the same

“self-centered and materialistic”

way of thinking that created the worldwide financial meltdown was also endangering creation.

“I trust that in the course of this year … it will be possible to reach an agreement for effectively dealing with this question…To cultivate peace, one must protect creation…The protection of creation is not principally a response to an aesthetic need, but much more to a moral need, inasmuch as nature expresses a plan of love and truth which is prior to us and which comes from God.”

To prove his point, the German-born Pope alluded to the former Soviet regime:

“Was it not easy to see the great harm which an economic system lacking any reference to the truth about man had done not only to the dignity and freedom of individuals and peoples, but to nature itself, by polluting soil, water and air?…The denial of God distorts the freedom of the human person, yet it also devastates creation.”

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5 Technology Solutions for Global Warming

January 11, 2010 – 9:52 am

Ocean Fertilization
The idea of Ocean Fertilization is based on the ability of ocean plankton to absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen into the atmosphere. If you feed plankton with nutrients and minerals, like iron, they’ll grow, meaning they can take up more carbon dioxide.

Manmade Volcanoes
Massive volcano eruptions can serve to cool down the Earth; the tremendous amounts of particles and gases they emit circle the globe, and shield solar rays.
Then why not trigger some volcanoes or manmade earthquakes? The venerable British Royal Society — once led by Sir Isaac Newton — is backing research into the idea.

Space Frisbees

According to Roger Angel, an astronomy and optics professor at the University of Arizona, we could use 20 giant electromagnetic guns, which would shoot Frisbee-size ceramic disks, 800,000 disks every five minutes, nonstop for 10 years. But not just for fun, the point of this would be to block solar rays.

CO2 Scrubbers
We could also simply scrub the planet free from carbon dioxide. A team of American scientists are creating a prototype device to do just that. They claim their device will capture one ton of CO2 from the air every day.

“Burping Tanks” for Cows

“Emissions” from both ends of cows and other livestock are responsible for up to 25% of “manmade” methane releases. Methane is more than 20 times more potent a global warming gas than carbon dioxide. In fact, the average cow emits between 80kg and 120kg of methane a year.
Scientists in Argentina are strapping plastic tanks to cows, to measure the output and get a better read on the problem. One day farmers will be collecting cow emissions and using them to fuel machinery – or better yet, farmers will be “engineering” livestock feed to reduce emissions.

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Rethinking Evolution in Poland

January 7, 2010 – 7:36 pm

Scientists in Poland have discovered fossilized footprints of tetrapods which roamed a muddy basin in what is now southeastern Poland, 397 million years ago. Tetrapod species are four-legged animals that had backbones, such as amphibians.

The significance of this discovery is the shift in the timing of transition from our fish-like ancestors to land creatures. Originally it was thought that this change in form happened about 380 million years ago. The once held earliest four-legged animals were from Ichthyostega and Acanthostega, which date back to 374 million and 359 million years respectively. Now we know that four-legged creatures are millions of years older than that.

These new found land creatures probably had crocodile-like body shapes, with fin-like tails and stumpy legs. As for their size, some of them reached up to 10 feet (3 meters) in length.
Marek Narkiewicz of the Polish Geological Institute said of the area where the fossils were found:

“It seems like it was a very extensive muddy basin, marine basin, that was very shallow and very wide, hundreds of kilometers wide…That drying out may have been an evolutionary boost needed to get fishy animals up onto the land…When we have an animal that’s adjusted to swim and then it’s left stranded during desiccation, during drying out, and if it doesn’t have the ability to walk then of course it’s death.”

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Republicans Will Try Again to stop Health Care Reform

January 6, 2010 – 6:41 pm

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor had decided to release the names of 37 Democratic members of the House, whom he is targeting to switch their vote on health care reform.
The Virginia Republican released a memo, which pinned the GOP’s prospects of derailing reform on convincing three of those 37 members to change their vote from a yea to a nay. If Republicans can secure those votes, it would reverse the narrow margin on which health care reform initially passed through the House of Representatives.
The memo read:

“Millions of Americans have made clear their opposition to the Democrat take-over of our nation’s health care system. Together with my Whip Team, I have identified 37 Democrats who – we believe – can be persuaded to vote against a final health care agreement. Because each of these 37 Democrats voted for the House bill, we only need to turn 3 votes to prevent a final agreement from passing…If we can convince enough of these 37 Members (along with the 39 Democrats who already voted no) to reconsider and switch their position on the bill, I know that we can defeat this government take-over of our health care before it becomes law.”

While the number of needed defections is small at best, Cantor’s gambit remains a long shot. Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi, of California, is widely believed to have the votes needed to get the legislation through her chamber. It is possible that some of the 39 Democratic lawmakers who opposed the reform in the first vote will switch their votes the second time. Certainly this will be possible if the legislation more closely resembles the Senate’s version.
Stay buckled in kids, it’s going to get interesting.

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Israel, Leaders in Water Technology

January 6, 2010 – 6:29 pm

Israel has begun to look beyond its lack of natural resources and has decided to take the lead in water technology. A growing number of Israeli firms have their eyes on overseas markets, offering their expertise in such forums as desalination technology, sewage-eating bacteria and wastewater treatment.

“Israel is definitely one of the leaders, if not the leader, when it comes to water. … I think of Israel as the Silicon Valley of water,”

said Shawn Lesser, president of Sustainable World Capital, an Atlanta investment firm which focuses on clean energy and water technology companies.
Israel’s emphasis on exporting high-tech innovations in areas like water technology helped them rebound before most other nations from the world’s worst recession in decades.

“When you check the breakdown, the only market segment where the level of exports is higher than pre-crisis levels is in the high-tech sector,”

said Amit Friedman, head of the macroeconomic research department at the Bank of Israel.

Aqwise was Israel’s fastest growing technology company this year. They are a water treatment company that uses small, bacteria-dispensing plastic cubes to break down sewage, thereby increasing treatment efficiency and capacity.
Aqwise’s vice president of business and development, Udi Leshem, said the firm has increased its sales by 50% this year by looking to markets overseas.
He said:

“The main growth engine of the company has been growing into foreign markets, starting in Israel as a base and then exporting to Europe, the United states and other places…Once we did that, growth accelerated.”

Aqwise while Israel’s water leader, is not alone in the game.

“This technology is important. You have an enormous advantage if you can quickly know and can monitor where the leaks are coming from and fix them,”

said Raphael Semiat, a water technology expert at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.

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For those of you who consume mass quantities of bread as part of your high-carbs diet, or thinking that it is among the healthiest things that you can eat, hold the phone, this one’s for you.

Gluten is a protein found in wheat, barley, rye, spelt, kamut, and oats. It is contained in pizza, pasta, bread, wraps, rolls and most processed food.
People with diagnosed, undiagnosed, and “latent” celiac disease or gluten sensitivity have a much higher risk of death, mainly from heart disease and various kinds of cancer.

The Journal of the American Medical Association did a study of 30,000 patients from 1969 to 2008, and examined deaths in three groups: full-blown celiac disease, inflammation of the intestine, and latent celiac disease or gluten sensitivity.

39% increased risk of death in those with celiac disease, 72% increased risk in those with gut inflammation related to gluten, and 35% increased risk in those with gluten sensitivity but no celiac disease.

An estimated 99% of people, who have a problem with eating gluten, are not even aware of it. They blame their ill health or symptoms on something else instead of gluten sensitivity, which is 100% curable.

Another study comparing the blood of 10,000 people from 50 years ago to 10,000 people today found that the incidences of full-blown celiac disease increased by 400% (elevated TTG antibodies) during the time period. If we saw a 400% increase in heart disease or cancer, this would be big news, but we hear almost nothing about this.

One thing to remember is this: Undiagnosed gluten problems cost the American healthcare system tons of money. It isn’t just a few people who are known to suffer, it’s millions. Far more people have gluten sensitivity than you might think. The most serious form of allergy to gluten, celiac disease, affects one in 100 people, or three million Americans, most of who don’t know they have it. But less severe forms of gluten sensitivity are even more common and may affect up to one-third of the American population.

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