At Americas Summit, Allies Nudge U.S. To Change
Source: http://www.npr.org/2012/04/15/150658727/at-americas-summit-allies-nudge-u-s-to-change?ft=1&f=1003
Source: http://www.npr.org/2012/04/15/150658727/at-americas-summit-allies-nudge-u-s-to-change?ft=1&f=1003
President Obama says the disappointing jobs numbers from March show that more needs to be done to strengthen economic security. He addressed the numbers during a White House conference on women in the economy. NPR's Scott Horsley explains the president is making an aggressive appeal to women as part of his re-election campaign.
Source: http://www.npr.org/2012/04/07/150182146/obama-makes-a-pitch-to-working-women?ft=1&f=1014
There seem to be a lot of bugs in certain parts of the country this spring. Richmond, Virginia reports an unusual amount of cankerworms this spring; Iowa experienced surprisingly thick swarms of fungus gnats about two weeks ago; and then there's the increasing issue of stinkbugs in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic. Robert Siegel and Audie Cornish talk about what people are seeing, and what experts think is going on.
Source: http://www.npr.org/2012/04/05/150083774/early-spring-means-bugs-lots-of-bugs?ft=1&f=1007
April 7, 2012Dreary Forecasts From Recovery Skeptics
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Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2012/04/07/dreary_forecasts_from_recovery_skeptics_277154.html
Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/215116081?client_source=feed&format=rss
Public health officials have their hands full keeping your clam chowder and raw oysters safe. That's due, in part, to red tides.
Red tides happen nearly every year as coastal waters warm, killing fish and poisoning shellfish along U.S. coasts. They're not actually tides; they're huge blooms of naturally occurring toxic algae.
If people eat shellfish infected with these algae they can become sick with what's called paralytic shellfish poisoning.
But scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are working to prevent outbreaks by tracking when and where red tides will happen next.
The toxic algae sleep nestled in the muck at the bottom of Puget Sound. A team of NOAA scientists based in Seattle was recently out looking for the algae so they can predict where and how big the red tides might be in the spring and summer — when the algae wake up and start to infect shellfish.
It's hard to predict where these blooms will occur because winds and currents move the clouds of algae around. So the scientists target areas where blooms have occurred in the past.
They've found high levels of algal cysts in areas that later had high levels of poisoned shellfish. The toxins don't go away when shellfish are cooked or frozen.
No one has died from paralytic shellfish poisoning in Washington state since the 1940s. But every year the state's Department of Health manually tests thousands of clams, oysters and mussels for toxin levels. And every year some shellfish beds are closed to harvesting.
Mapping the algae at the bottom of Puget Sound won't replace manually testing the shellfish, but the NOAA team wants to make the Department of Health's job easier.
"We want to be able to say when and where there is a really strong chance of a bloom occurring so that the shellfish growers and the health managers are able to put in place some strategies to try and prevent, or reduce and limit, the impacts that these blooms can have," says Stephanie Moore, a NOAA scientist.
Moore says scientists have a lot to learn about what triggers these red tides. One thing's certain though: The algae love warm sunshine-filled water. Researchers say they could see more blooms as water temperatures rise.
Ashley Ahearn is a reporter for NPR member station KUOW in Seattle.
As a follow-up to yesterday's wonderful post by Barbara, I wanted to raise a point the science vs. religion debate often misses. This sunday in The New York Times, philosopher of science David Albert reviewed A Universe From Nothing by cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss. The book attempts to show how physics can now answer this age-old question: "How could something come from nothing?"
At some point I was hoping to write on the book myself because Krauss is wonderful at explaining science and the science is wonderfully explained. But at the end of the review Albert turns from questions related to philosophical definitions of nothing and looks squarely at how the book is aimed toward the science vs. religion debate.
None other than Richard Dawkins provides an afterword for A Universe From Nothing, stating: "Even the last remaining trump card of the theologian, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' shrivels up before your eyes as you read these pages"
For David Albert this kind of approach fails to understand, for better or worse, the importance of religion. Let me quote the entire last paragraph of his review.
"And I guess it ought to be mentioned, quite apart from the question of whether anything Krauss says turns out to be true or false, that the whole business of approaching the struggle with religion as if it were a card game, or a horse race, or some kind of battle of wits, just feels all wrong — or it does, at any rate, to me. When I was growing up, where I was growing up, there was a critique of religion according to which religion was cruel, and a lie, and a mechanism of enslavement, and something full of loathing and contempt for everything essentially human. Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn't, but it had to do with important things — it had to do, that is, with history, and with suffering, and with the hope of a better world — and it seems like a pity, and more than a pity, and worse than a pity, with all that in the back of one's head, to think that all that gets offered to us now, by guys like these, in books like this, is the pale, small, silly, nerdy accusation that religion is, I don't know, dumb."
I have to agree. While I will defend my (and other atheists) right not to believe, there seems something so peevish in these lines of reasoning. The intolerance that organized religion bestowed to humanity is certainly part of its legacy. But to think that exhausts the subject of human spirituality and the impulse behind so many people's will to a life of compassion based in their faith is, I don't know, dumb.
A truly interesting discussion about science and human spiritual endeavor (including its manifestations in religion) could go much farther than this.
You can keep up with more of what Adam Frank is thinking on Facebook and Twitter. His latest book is About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang.