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Albert Bridge at the Blue Hour  

Sarah A Stewart posted a photo:

Interesting light on Albert Bridge as the sun sets.

 
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Growing Green Must Go Green  
As the legalization of marijuana for medicinal and recreational purposes becomes more widespread, the budding industry has come under closer scrutiny. One of the more serious concerns to be raised is the possible environmental damage that could be caused by a mass increase in Cannabis production.

Marijuana cultivation has a host of environmental concerns such as land coverage, water consumption, power usage, as well as pesticides and fertilizer run-off. Escaped, "wild" Cannabisis not often considered as a potential problem since it is not exactly an invasive species, but it can compete with other plants and disrupt local ecosystems. These situations are quite serious in California, where important watersheds have been threatened by unsanctioned marijuana growing operations.

Resource consumption is by far the greatest environmental risk associated with large scale marijuana cultivation. In many areas where it is grown, Cannabis consumes far more water thanthe native vegetation. Indoor operations require enough light intensity to mimic the sun, which requires a large amount of electrical power, often resulting in additional environmental pollution.High intensity discharge (HID) light bulbs traditionally used for indoor growing also contain significant amounts of highly toxic mercury. If Cannabis production is to truly become a sustainable industry, strategies will need to be developed to at least make it eco-tolerable, if not eco-friendly.

Government officials and academic researchers alike have been examining the issue in hope of mitigating any environmental damage caused by the impending growth of the Cannabis industry. There appears to be a consensus that regulations will be a key part of the solution. An April 2016 review in the academic journal Environmental Research Letters concludes with the demand that marijuana agriculture be held to standards on par with those governing conventional cultivation activities. This sentiment is echoed from the field of law as well; a piece from the Arizona Law Review states that consistent policy enforcement is necessary to mitigate the environmental impact, as well as help set quality standards. Now they need to decide upon the best rules to enforce.

Environmentally friendly growers have been consistently testing and adopting measures to address energy consumption and similar issues for decades. One of the more successful changes has been in the adoption of LED grow lights for indoor cultivation. According to ledgrowlights.com, the technology used in high-quality LED grow lights has advanced to the point that they can actually grow plants as well or better than traditional HID bulbs (HPS, MH, CMH/LEC, etc.) at a fraction of the energy cost, and will last for considerably longer, without anyof the toxic mercury. Water consumption can ironically be reduced with a fine-tuned hydroponic setup, though there is obviously still a lot of water involved. Another approach to decreasing consumption rates is to more closely monitor usage levels so that waste can be minimized.

It remains to be seen if current environmentally-friendly strategies for reducing consumption will be effective when scaled to larger operations, and more research will certainly be needed to findsolutions for the exponential increase of marijuana production that will likely result from ongoing legalization efforts. Cannabis is primed to become a key crop in international markets, but there is little hope of it proving to be sustainable without significant adoption of eco-friendly cultivation methods.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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Florida investigation links four recent Zika cases to local mosquito-borne virus transmission  
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been informed by the State of Florida that Zika virus infections in four people were likely caused by bites of local Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. The cases are likely the first known occurrence of local mosquito-borne Zika virus transmission in the continental United States. CDC is closely coordinating with Florida officials who are leading the ongoing investigations, and at the state's request, sent a CDC medical epidemiologist to provide additional assistance.  
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Judy Frankel: SMART ALEC Founder Refuses to Cease and Desist  
Matthew Charles Cardinale, activist, law student, and affordable housing advocate, refused to respond to ALEC's demand to cease using the name "SMART ...

Read more: SMART ALEC, Alec, Matthew Cardinale, Atlanta, New Orleans, Affordable Housing, Affordable Housing Impact Statements, American Legislative Exchange Council, Politicians, Represent.US, American-Anti-Corruption-Act, Portland, Community-Rights-Campaign, Community Rights, Paul Cienfuegos, Democracy Unlimited, Coos County, Right to Sustainable Energy Future, State Innovation Exchange, Smart-Aleck, Los Angeles, Albany, Pittsburgh, Climate Change, Climate Destabilization, Global Warming, Citizen Rights, State Policy, Policy, Environmental Policy, Environmental Rights, Environment, Environmental Justice, Aaca, Ahis, Politics News

 
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A Corpse Flower Blooms in the Bronx  
For the first time since 1939, the New York Botanical Garden has coaxed a corpse flower to open its massive bloom and flood the greenhouse with the stench of sewers and rotting meat.

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com  
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r0B0t: Exoskeleton 'Onesie' Gives Babies With Cerebral Palsy A Better Start In Life  

Babies who are at risk of developing cerebral palsy could be helped by a robotic “onesie”, designed by a team at the University of Oklahoma, US.

The motorised exoskeleton, which is attached to the baby via a harness and skateboard-type-crawler, helps young children develop motor and cognitive skills and promotes early movement.

With power steering, the Self-Initiated Prone Progression Crawler (SIPPC) device gives babies a push towards early walking and crawling on the level of their peers.

Not only that, but it allows doctors to monitor the child's movement and brain activity on a 3D scanner.

SEE ALSO

Adorable Moment Six-Year-Old Keeps Pace With Friend Who Has Cerebral Palsy So He's Not Last On Sports Day

Boy With Cerebral Palsy Disappointed David Cameron Didn't Personally Receive NHS Treatment Funding Plea

Toddler Dedicated To Guiding His Twin Sister With Cerebral Palsy Through Childhood

Cerebral palsy affects movement and muscle coordination and is diagnosed in every two children in 1000 born in the UK, according to Cerebral Palsy UK.

Therapy to reverse the effects of the disease must start as early as possible, but most children are not diagnosed until they are at least one-year-old. 

Trials are currently ongoing with 56 infants in America, and the scientists admit there is much more to be done before it is more widely available to patients. 

The new technology is enabling detection in babies as young as two months old, giving them the best start in life.

 
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r0B0t: 'Mr. Robot' review: A nice game of chess - The Workprint  

The Workprint

'Mr. Robot' review: A nice game of chess The Workprint This prompts Elliot to confess that he lost his job because he destroyed a bunch of secure servers in his company's server room — he just doesn't remember doing it…something about anger toward the people who couldn't go on their expensive vacations ... Mr. Robot: season 2 episode 4 review eps2.2_init1.asecThe Nerd Recites Mr. Robot: Init1 ReviewDen of Geek! Dreaming of a (Slightly) Darker Future on Mr. RobotFilm School Rejects (blog) Hidden Remote -whoismrrobot.com all 105 news articles »

 
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Fire Of London  

NoVice87 posted a photo:

The sun lighting up the clouds behind Canary Wharf from the Greenwich Peninsula.

 
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The Purple Tower  

Justin S Reid posted a photo:

A really nice day in London at the end; the purple of the Tower is the cherry on top! BEST in BLACK My Instagram profile for street, phonephotography My website giuseppetorre.co.uk via 500px ift.tt/1K6AkKa

 
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CF002198 by Michael Salisbury  

CF002198 by Michael Salisbury

Michael Salisbury: Photos

 
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Don't play by the book.... play by your heart!  

marco18678 posted a photo:

#urbex

For more info and stories behind my pictures follow me on facebook .... www.facebook.com/mbontenbal

 
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Photos of the Day: July 29, 2016  

Explore the news of the day with these images from around the world.  
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Exoskeleton 'Onesie' Gives Babies With Cerebral Palsy A Better Start In Life  

Babies who are at risk of developing cerebral palsy could be helped by a robotic “onesie”, designed by a team at the University of Oklahoma, US.

The motorised exoskeleton, which is attached to the baby via a harness and skateboard-type-crawler, helps young children develop motor and cognitive skills and promotes early movement.

With power steering, the Self-Initiated Prone Progression Crawler (SIPPC) device gives babies a push towards early walking and crawling on the level of their peers.

Not only that, but it allows doctors to monitor the child's movement and brain activity on a 3D scanner.

SEE ALSO

Adorable Moment Six-Year-Old Keeps Pace With Friend Who Has Cerebral Palsy So He's Not Last On Sports Day

Boy With Cerebral Palsy Disappointed David Cameron Didn't Personally Receive NHS Treatment Funding Plea

Toddler Dedicated To Guiding His Twin Sister With Cerebral Palsy Through Childhood

Cerebral palsy affects movement and muscle coordination and is diagnosed in every two children in 1000 born in the UK, according to Cerebral Palsy UK.

Therapy to reverse the effects of the disease must start as early as possible, but most children are not diagnosed until they are at least one-year-old. 

Trials are currently ongoing with 56 infants in America, and the scientists admit there is much more to be done before it is more widely available to patients. 

The new technology is enabling detection in babies as young as two months old, giving them the best start in life.

 
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ALEC in Indianapolis: ExxonMobil and the #WebOfDenial  
This month, nineteen United States Senators called attention to the Web of Denial, a network of front groups that oppose any productive action to combat climate change. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) led the charge, building upon his weekly "Time To Wake Up" speech series on global warming, flagging the front groups that peddle climate doubt for their clients in the oil, gas and coal industries.

One of the top groups obstructing any form of progress is the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. ALEC convened its annual meeting in Indianapolis this week, where it hooks state politicians up with lobbyists from Koch Industries (and its many nonprofit tentacles), Peabody Energy, tobacco companies, pharmaceutical companies and other industries looking to put pro-business policies  in the hands of state politicians.

Conference Cash from ExxonMobil and the #WebOfDenial

The Center for Media and Democracy revealed that ExxonMobil is a top sponsor of the conference. Several front groups in the Web of Denial have joined ExxonMobil in sponsoring ALEC's 2016 annual meeting:

"Chair's Level" Sponsors:

The State Policy Network (SPN)

Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF)

"Director's Level" sponsors:

Americans for Prosperity (AFP)

Exhibitors:

The Charles Koch Institute

The Heritage Foundation

The Heartland Institute

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University (GMU)




All of these groups are members of the State Policy Network, the coordinating body for "Stink Tanks" that exist in all 50 states, largely following the strategies of national affiliates like the Heritage Foundation and Americans for Prosperity.

Each of the SPN groups present at ALEC's meeting this week have received support from the industrial billionaire Charles Koch, and his brother David Koch, who together own and run Koch Industries. Nonprofit foundations controlled by the Kochs have distributed $23,445,693 to ALEC and the six other groups listed above, from 1997-2014, according to IRS 990 data compiled by Greenpeace USA. Koch Industries lobbyist Mike Morgan is on ALEC's corporate board of directors. Koch Industries has given over $14 million to politicians, PACs and initiatives at the state level over the last 21 years, according disclosures compiled by FollowTheMoney.org.

Believe it or not, $23.4 million in traceable Koch money is chump change compared to grants from the double-headed "Dark Money ATM," DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund. Since 2002, the DonorsTrust franchise dispersed $77,361,091 in anonymous funds to ALEC, AFP, Heritage, Heartland, Mercatus, SPN and TPPF. The Koch family is among the donors known to anonymize millions of dollars through DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund.

ExxonMobil gave these same seven organizations a total $3,696,700 since 1998. ExxonMobil lobbyist Cynthia Bergman White is on ALEC's corporate board of directors, as were other Exxon executives before her. Exxon has poured $71.6 million into state-level candidates and ballot initiatives over the last 27 years.

Peabody Energy's recent bankruptcy filings list several of these groups on the company's payroll: ALEC, AFP Oklahoma, SPN and TPPF. Peabody lobbyist Michael Blank is on ALEC's corporate board, as were other Peabody executives before him. Peabody pushed $1.1 million into state-level elections in the last 19 years, before it went bankrupt.

And finally, another front group with Peabody roots is among ALEC's 2016 annual meeting sponsors: the Energy Policy Network, formed by the late Kelly Mader. Mr. Mader was a lobbyist for Peabody Energy, and he served on ALEC's corporate board of directors for many years. Peabody continued to give money to Mr. Mader after he left the company. It is unclear if those funds were for the Energy Policy Network, and what will become of it after Mr. Mader's unexpected passing.

#ExxonKnew the Science on Climate Change. Then it Lied. Then ALEC Helped.

Exxon is being investigated by several state attorneys general for covering up its own internal research on climate change, and then financing groups to run public relation campaigns aimed at discrediting such science. By hiding their own accurate assessment of the science and instead promoting doubt, these state AGs are asking if Exxon has committed fraud against its shareholders, the U.S. government, and the public.


ALEC politicians are treated to industry-sponsored education seminars (ALEC charges extra for that), and closed-door policy meetings, where ALEC's model bills are discussed and finalized. Legislators have received their climate science "education" at ALEC meetings, not by climate scientists, but by front groups in the coal- and oil-funded Web of Denial.

The other primary service ALEC provides to sponsors is getting model bills into the hands of willing legislators.

Aliya Haq at the Natural Resources Defense Council has observed ALEC politicians following Peabody's lead in attacking a wide variety regulations designed to limit pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

Citizens of Kansas, Ohio, and North Carolina watched as ALEC politicians lined up behind Koch Industries' attacks on state laws boosting clean energy development.

And numerous states were duped by ALEC legislators helping ExxonMobil hide the chemicals used in fracking from the public (which ALEC spun as a "disclosure" bill). Not at the table to discuss these cut-and-paste state policies: the American voter.

As I've pointed out to various lobbyists attending ALEC's meeting, even if a citizen finds out about ALEC, it doesn't mean they can afford ALEC's registration fees, travel expenses, and time off of work to attend. Easy for a paid lobbyists to say, when it's their job to attend such conferences.

@AndrewNehring a common delusion: lobbyist at @ALEC_States forgets that most people don't have 6-7 figure income. #alecexposed #alecindy

-- Connor Gibson (@ClimateConnor) July 27, 2016

Having activism reframed as lobbying (by lobbyists) is one form of pushback groups like Greenpeace USA are accustomed to. Another is attempts to re-define the First Amendment, something that every American holds dear as a fundamental right.



Just as the tobacco industry did during its last stand against prosecutors in the 1990s, Exxon and its many #WebOfDenial mouthpieces have asserted this is a violation of their first amendment rights, even though fraud isn't protected by the first amendment. Many of these people and groups were actually involved in defending the tobacco industry, before climate science denial became the latest trend in corporate deceit.

Yesterday, ALEC hosted a discussion on this revisionist approach to the First Amendment. The conversation appears to be intended to coordinate defensive strategies for companies like Exxon--subject to government investigations--and groups like ALEC--which has been the subject of repeated complaints to the IRS over improper use of its nonprofit tax-exempt status.

And yesterday's lunch, sponsored by Americans For Prosperity, featured Texas Gov Greg Abbott, who attended remotely via video. Governor Abbott, who himself sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency many times as Texas' former Attorney General, is part of a coalition of states working with fossil fuel companies--and their front groups like ALEC and AFP--to oppose the EPA's new regulations on climate pollution.



Crossposted from Greenpeace USA.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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Animal 'roles' could provide key to accurate forest restoration findings, says new study  
Replanting cleared forests can recover animal communities and important ecological processes relatively quickly, says a new study. But, warn the research team, the traditional way of evaluating such restoration projects, which includes the numbers of species and individuals in a habitat, is insufficient and may need to change.  
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AmirsCamera posted a photo:

London. June 2016.

Instagram: @amirscamera

 
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Today we're thrilled to do our first post from our Neighborhood...  

Today we're thrilled to do our first post from our Neighborhood Portrait series with DNAinfo Chicago! This Overview shows Maggie Daley Park in Chicago, Illinois, USA. To read the full story, click here:

https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20160728/downtown/check-out-maggie-daley-park-from-space?utm_source=DO&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=portrait

The park's Buckingham Fountain stands out in this Overview with its ornate design and serve as a gathering point for thousands of visitors at the Lollapalooza festival this weekend. We're excited to launch this series with DNAinfo, bringing together a collection of images celebrating the uniqueness and beauty of neighborhoods in New York and Chicago.

41°52′57″N 87°37′08″W

Source imagery: DigitalGlobe

 
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Platform No. 7-6 by Anuchit Sundarakiti  

Platform No. 7-6 by Anuchit Sundarakiti

Bangkok Railway Station stories 2016

Anuchit Sundarakiti: Photos

 
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004A0217.jpg by jingyou guo  

004A0217.jpg by jingyou guo

jingyou guo: Photos

 
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DEGR1834-2.jpg by Stefano Montigiani  

DEGR1834-2.jpg by Stefano Montigiani

Stefano Montigiani: Photos

 
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Ladybug by Luca Moriconi  

Ladybug by Luca Moriconi

Luca Moriconi: Photos

 
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International Tiger Day: 45 NGOs Call for End to Tiger Farming, Trade  
 
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International Tiger Day: Cause for Celebration or Alarm?  

By Gabriel Fava, Born Free Foundation

 
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AbstractRadio session - july 2016  

Tons of tremendous toe-tappers here, from smooth vocals to big summer tunes, including Liem's great reworking of a Sydney Youngblood classic, F. Rizardo's re-jig of Joyce Sims, DJ Dan and Purple Disco's cracking contributions, and then there's the filthy bass running through The Swiss' disco-drenched Elouisa…

Enjoy, and as ever, thanks for listening.

The Abrad team.

[any feedback, much appreciated]

select mixes by genre:

House

Deep

Funky

Tracklist

Start	Artist	Track Title	Label
000:00	jean claude gavri	nightfly	ebo
005:10	kaiserdisco	que ritmo	stylerockets
009:59	james winter	deeper love	city soul
014:06	winnie deep	new day	afrikamotion
018:27	life less ordinary	new day	club sweat
025:06	disclosure	holding on	caracal
029:32	todd terry	leaving me again	phoenix
033:45	alfred azzetto	funkasso	minimarket
037:02	djoon experience	baptise me	djoon
044:22	teddy douglas	check it out	nervous
047:51	liem	if only I could	white
053:21	the swiss	elouisa	kitsune
058:16	purple disco	love	defected
061:47	vhyce	hard to find	no brainer
067:46	dj dan	I got a man	instereo
071:09	noisy bears	u got my love	abcdeep
074:48	franky rizardo	come into my life	simma black
078:24	mr moon	freaky	mr moon
081:49	knee deep	all about love	kneedeep
090:38	siege	yeah	brobot
095:45	gabriel and castellon	harlem	inhouse
099:08	kenny summit	like a moth to the flame	guesthouse
103:27	sugarstarr	hey sunshine	enormous
109:00	claptone	ghost	exploited
114:21	damian lazarus	vermillion reprise	crosstown rebels

-- Total running time 119.54 --

 
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Emirates A380 Evening Departure.  

spencer.wilmot posted a photo:

Sunset over 27R.

 
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Red Burning Portal by Gunnar Heilmann  

Red Burning Portal by Gunnar Heilmann

I was with some friends in Belgrade .. on the way we found this Red Burning Portal in the mist of the Kosmaj Mountains .... its actually a monument to the partisan division from WWII see more of it on www.facebook.com/GunnarsPhotos http://www.gunnarheilmann.com/home/lightpainting/lightpainting/

Gunnar Heilmann: Photos

 
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Ferris wheel by Руслан Акаев  

Ferris wheel by Руслан Акаев

Руслан Акаев: Photos

 
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Peru's New President Gets Wealth of Environmental Tools  
This story has been adapted from Ecosystem Marketplace
By Kelli Barrett

When Peru's new president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, took office yesterday, he inherited a powerful set of tools that outgoing President Ollanta Humala approved for funneling money into conservation and sustainable agriculture. Nearly all were approved in the last two weeks of the month.

First, the Ministry of Environment released formal regulations for the country's groundbreaking Mecanismos de Retribución por Servicios Ecosistémicos (MRSEs), or "Mechanisms of Compensation for Ecosystem Services" law, which legislators approved in 2014. The law created a legal framework for conservation activities that harness public and private capital, and the new regulations offer clear guidance on how to implement them. In a related move, the government approved its National Forestry and Climate Change Strategy and issued guidance on biodiversity offsets, primarily for Andean ecosystems.

More on the Forest Trends Blog

Ecosystem Marketplace publisher Forest Trends has been participating in the development of Peru's green infrastructure through a number of programs, including the Peru Ecosystem Services Project Incubator, a collaboration of Forest Trends with regional NGOs and the Peruvian Ministry of Environment. For an insider perspective on the new developments, check out the latest entry in the Forest Trends Blog.

The Ecosystem Services Regime

This new regulation highlights that Peru has been working on this issue of recognizing ecosystems services as an important tool for environmental management, social inclusion and wealth distribution, Gabriel Quijandria, Peru's Deputy Minister of Strategic Development of Natural Resources said in a statement.

The National Congress passed its MRSE law in 2014 after six years of negotiation. Essentially, the law provides the regulatory certainty MRSE project developers need to operate and create more projects, according to an earlier Ecosystem Marketplace article. According to Peru's Environment Ministry, environmental services under the MRSE umbrella include water regulation, biodiversity conservation, carbon storage, pollination and recreation among others.

The city of Lima made headlines last year when it began tapping its water fees to fund projects like the restoration of ancient, pre-Incan water management systems high in the Andes - a very visible manifestation of a nation-wide move to develop "green" (as opposed to gray) infrastructure that can better withstand the realities of climate change.

The True Value of an Ecosystem Services Law

Gena Gammie, Associate Director of the Forest Trends' Water Initiative, points out that Peru, like many Latin American countries, follows civil law, which requires more prescriptive statutes and ordinances than does the common law practiced in the United States, especially when it comes to the use of public funds.

If the terms of the projects aren't specifically allowed and promoted by the law, government officials run the risk of consequences for misuse of public funds, Gammie explains. The MRSE law and the new regulations eliminate many grey areas, creating more clarity for financial flows.

Connecting Conservation and Forests

Carbon sequestration is a common link between the MRSE regulation and the National Forestry and Climate Change Strategy. The MRSE law and regulation provide guidance and the overall structure regarding Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) projects. Meanwhile, the National Forestry and Climate Change Strategy functions as Peru's national REDD strategy. The two share a REDD component and influence one another, Gammie explains.

According to the Forest Trends blog post that summarizes the recent policymaking, the National Forestry and Climate Change Strategy represents an inclusive approach to land-use that brings together national and regional governments, indigenous groups and civil society to identify the major drivers of deforestation and then offer solutions.

Gustavo Suarez de Freitas, the Head of Peru's National Forest Conservation Program, agrees that this strategy can have a significant impact on curbing forest loss. He highlights the "production-protection" part, which aims to increase productivity on the landscape while maintaining and recognizing the benefits of conserved forests. "I am convinced that the production-protection will make the difference, and that with this as our foundation we will be able to begin to reverse deforestation in Peru," Suarez de Freitas told Forest Trends.

A Budding Biodiversity Offset Program

The newly released biodiversity offset guidance is separate from the MRSE regulation, though its impact will likely be large. Its focus is on protecting the biodiversity of Andean ecosystems where the biggest development projects are required to compensate for their adverse impacts on biodiversity, while offsetting remains voluntary for medium and small size development activities.

Protecting biodiversity in Peru is critical as the nation is one of the most biologically diverse places on Earth. And much of that is rare, endangered or both. Peru's Manu National Park is considered to be the richest biodiversity hotspot in the world.

However, as all of these policy announcements appear to have come in the nick of time, before a potential political wind-shift, Gammie says it will be interesting to see how the incoming government will move forward with them.

"Will the new administration implement these policies and continue to strengthen capacity around them or will they just let these go," she asks.

Be sure to follow us on the Bionic Planet podcast, which is available on iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, and wherever you access your podcasts.

Kelli Barrett is a freelance writer and Editorial Assistant at Ecosystem Marketplace. She can be reached at kbarrett@ecosystemmarketplace.com.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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Islamic State's Child Soldiers: First Come the Sweets, Then the Beheadings  
The Islamic State is holding thousands of young boys captive in Syria and Iraq, where it is teaching them the Koran and how to become deadly child soldiers. By Katrin Kuntz  
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SPIEGEL Interview with Mathematician Ken Ono: 'You Will Never Succeed'  
Ken Ono is an award-winning mathematician who specializes in number theory. As a kid, his parents pushed him hard to be the best, and it almost drove him to ruin. He talked to SPIEGEL about young prodigies, suicide in Japanese culture and divine afflatus.  
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Chiswick sunset  

Edward Swift posted a photo:

The sun sets in Chiswick, London, United Kingdom

 
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As Clouds Head for the Poles, Time to Prepare for Food and Water Shocks  
Co-authored with Betsy Otto and Richard Waite

A changing climate means less rain and lower water supplies in regions where many people live and much of the planet's food is produced: the mid-latitudes of the Northern and Southern hemispheres, including the U.S. Southwest, southern Europe and parts of the Middle East, southern Africa, Australia and Chile. As WRI-Aqueduct's future scenarios for water supply show, diminished water supplies will be apparent in these areas by 2020 -- less than four years away -- and are expected to grow worse by 2030 and 2040.



Now a new study in the journal Nature provides some of the first evidence that this widely-predicted phenomenon -- the movement of clouds and rainfall from the mid-latitudes towards the North and South poles -- is already taking place. Just like the retreat of glaciers and polar sea ice, now clouds and rain are retreating poleward.

This will have huge implications for agricultural production, industrial and energy output, and municipal water provisioning. Many irrigated agricultural areas are already facing water stress. The climate-driven shift of clouds and rain -- known as Hadley Cell expansion -- will put those areas under even greater stress in the future. Rain-fed agriculture, which many poor people depend upon, will also suffer as a result of reduced rainfall in the mid-latitude regions.



A recent WRI study finds that sub-Saharan Africa will need to more than triple crop production by 2050 in order to feed its growing population. This hard-to-reach target will become more difficult in places like southern Africa and the western Sahel, where water supply is projected to fall.

In addition to worsening water stress and undermining food security, decreasing water supply in the world's mid-latitudes may also help destabilize nations in these regions, adding to pre-existing political tensions, and helping contribute to armed conflict and migration, as we have seen in places like Syria.

What can we do now to prepare for these future climate change threats? First, we need to better understand the nexus of water risk and food security. WRI-Aqueduct, with support from Danida (the Danish development aid agency) and the Skoll Global Threats Fund, is developing an online tool that will help policymakers identify global water risk and food security hot spots. The risks are not always obvious. A country can be relatively water-secure within its own borders, but still be highly dependent on food imports, some of which come from countries whose agricultural production systems face very high levels of water risk. In poor countries, price spikes can put food out of the reach of many citizens. The new WRI Aqueduct tool aims to shed light on these types of threats.

Vulnerable countries also need to take steps now to make their food production systems more productive and resilient in the face of climate change. By improving land and water management practices, for example, farmers in Africa have been able to restore soil fertility, capture rainfall before it runs off farm fields, and sustainably increase yields on their farms. A recent WRI study estimates that improving land and water management on just 25 percent of sub-Saharan Africa's 300 million hectares (more than 740 million acres) of prime cropland would result in an additional 22 million tons of food.

Tools and mechanisms can help vulnerable countries cope with drought and famine. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), for example, is a leading provider of early warning and analysis on food insecurity. Also important are insurance and subsidy systems that can help support farmers when crops fail.

The shifting of cloud and rainfall patterns around the globe are just one more visible sign of the effects of climate change. What we need to begin doing in response is to anticipate the location and magnitude of these effects, and build resilience into the lives and livelihoods of those who will be most vulnerable.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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Ocean-cleaning sea bins will gobble up plastic waste to recycle  
Bins designed to suck up debris floating on the sea are in the final stages of testing, shame they won't make it to Rio in time to clean up dirty waters at the Olympics  
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Why Hinkley Point is a nuclear folly of Titanic proportions  
The French firm EDF has approved plans for a massive nuclear reactor in the UK, but the UK government is hesitating. Let's hope it scuppers the project, says Michael Le Page  
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Electric Brain Stimulation During Sleep Could Actually Improve Your Memory  

Sleep is crucial for helping your brain to catalogue what you've learned that day. But for millions of people with neurological disorders, the processes required to consolidate information simply don't work properly.

Now, scientists have discovered an unusual method that could help improve the memories of people with conditions such as autism, Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia and major depressive disorder.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina used weak electric currents to target a specific area in the brains of sleeping volunteers. The non-invasive method strengthened memory in the participants, the study found.

Scientists have, for years, tried to understand how electrical brain activity generated during sleep affects memory. It has long been suspected that the so-called sleep spindles play a part.

“But we didn't know if sleep spindles enable or even cause memories to be stored and consolidated,” said senior author Flavio Frohlich.

“They could've been merely byproducts of other brain processes that enabled what we learn to be stored as a memory. But our study shows that, indeed, the spindles are crucial for the process of creating memories we need for every-day life. And we can target them to enhance memory.”

Frohlic's study represents the first time researchers have targeted sleep spindles without also increasing other natural electrical brain activity.

During the trial, 16 healthy male participants were tasked with performing two common memory exercises before they went to sleep.

The first involved associative word-pairing, while the second was a motor sequence tapping task. Half the group received a real transcranial alternating current stimulation (TACS), while the other half received a placebo.

The next morning, participants had to perform the same memory tests. There was no improvement in the word test scores of those who had received TACS, but there was a noted improvement when it came to performing the motor task.

“This demonstrated a direct causal link between the electric activity pattern of sleep spindles and the process of motor memory consolidation.” Frohlich said.

Caroline Lustenberger, PhD, first author and postdoctoral fellow in the Frohlich lab, said, “We're excited about this because we know sleep spindles, along with memory formation, are impaired in a number of disorders, such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer's. We hope that targeting these sleep spindles could be a new type of treatment for memory impairment and cognitive deficits.”

The findings were published in the journal Current Biology. 

 
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John A.R. Newlands Scientist of the Day John A. R. Newlands,...  









https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Square#/media/File:JAR_Newlands_Plaque.JPG


http://sceti.library.upenn.edu/sceti/smith/zoom.cfm?PictureID=313&level=2

John A.R. Newlands Scientist of the Day

John A. R. Newlands, a British chemist, died July 29, 1898, at age 60.

read more…

 
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The old lady  

Justin S Reid posted a photo:

It was the nicest shot of a poor evening sunset wise. Always bring a lee filter with you. via 500px ift.tt/1QDRrBO

 
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Kaleidoscope of Colors over London  

Yannis_K posted a photo:

 
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http://twitter.com/LeedsMuseums/status/758989467487133697 
Today the @CITES treaty protects endangered wildlife and plant species from being traded 
http://ifttt.com/missing_link?1469792218 

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City Sunrise  

entoptika posted a photo:

#london #cityoflondon #londonskyline #londonarchitecture #thames #sunrise

 
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Cyberpunks might not be crooks but they're really very rude  

El Eg whoever they are really upset this one

FotW An innocuous El Reg story about Russian web miscreants provoked an entirely unexpected reaction when an offended cyberpunk took it upon himself to tell us how the headline hurt his feelings.…

 
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London Bridge Sunset  

Fun@365 posted a photo:

Loving the reflected colours on the windows

 
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Can Dogs Help Sniff Out Low Blood Sugar In Diabetes?  

Trained dogs are increasingly being used to help people with diabetes detect hypoglycemia. One study finds the dogs can indeed do that, but aren't as reliable as a continuous glucose monitor.

 
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Forests, species on 4 continents threatened by palm oil expansion  

Full Text:

As palm oil production expands from Southeast Asia into tropical regions of the Americas and Africa, vulnerable forests and species on four continents face increased risk of loss, a new study finds. The largest areas of vulnerable forest are in Africa and South America, where more than 30 percent of forests within land suitable for oil palm plantations remain unprotected, the study shows.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

 
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Walking stick with wings  

Full Text:

A Brigham Young University study found that some walking stick species like this foot-long Phasma gigas, native to Papua New Guinea, re-evolved wings after losing them 50 million years earlier. Walking sticks, a group of insects that mimic twigs to stay hidden from predators, are the only organism known to have re-evolved a complex trait.

Image credit: Insect Molecular Genomics Lab, Brigham Young University; photo by Allison Whiting/BYU

 
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r0B0t: Dreaming of a (Slightly) Darker Future on Mr. Robot - Film School Rejects (blog)  

Film School Rejects (blog)

Dreaming of a (Slightly) Darker Future on Mr. Robot Film School Rejects (blog) He's been court ordered to see a psychiatrist (Krista) for anger management. The final pieces click into place as Elliot pulls out their father's old Mr. Robot jacket and tells his sister about his plans to destroy Evil Corp. Elliot has become Mr ... Mr. Robot: Init1 ReviewDen of Geek! 'Mr. Robot' Season 2, Episode 4 Recap: Game of ChessHidden Remote all 90 news articles »

 
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He Wants to Inject Your Bloodstream With Healing Nanobots  
This Catalonian chemistry wiz is developing a jet-pack engine to deliver medicine inside our bodies.  
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The Eastern Gate  

ShutterJack posted a photo:

What I envision as the last view into the garden of Eden from the Eastern Gate as Adam and Eve walk out of paradise forever.

 
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Deep-sea ecosystems still under threat despite UN protection  
Some of the world's most hidden but precious places are still not being adequately protected from fishing trawlers, despite 10 years of UN resolutions to protect them  
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r0B0t: Mr. Robot: Init1 Review - Den of Geek!  

Den of Geek!

Mr. Robot: Init1 Review Den of Geek! They catch up on the usual Alderson topics: Darlene's panic attacks, Elliot's anger issues and eventually, their dead dad. Elliot opens his closet and shows Darlene that he still has the “Mr. Robot” jacket their father used to wear when he went to work ...

 
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r0B0t: 'Mr. Robot' Season 2, Episode 4 Recap: Game of Chess - Hidden Remote  

Hidden Remote

'Mr. Robot' Season 2, Episode 4 Recap: Game of Chess Hidden Remote Things are getting interesting as Elliot Alderson continues to wrestle with his Mr. Robot persona. It's gotten to a point where he takes up a game of chess on the suggestion of his new friend Ray. However Ray doesn't exactly know what's at stake for ... and more »

 
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The Wild Ones: The Release  
The Wild Ones is a documentary series following the intersecting lives of the men and horses at an Arizona prison.  
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Writing Data Onto Single Atoms, Scientists Store The Longest Text Yet  

With atomic memory technology, little patterns of atoms can be arranged to represent English characters, fitting the content of more than a billion books onto the surface of a stamp.

 
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Trump's Cyber Comments Rouse The Democrats  

As they bolster their case that Hillary Clinton is ready to be commander in chief, Democrats are seizing on Donald Trump's comments seemingly encouraging Russia to use cyber-espionage against Clinton.

 
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http://twitter.com/theLidoShuffle/status/758842812464934912 
PLEASE TAKE ACTION- The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) is an agreement between... https://t.co/rdjEk3Bo1w 
https://t.co/rdjEk3Bo1w 

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Great Red Spot powers up the heat on Jupiter  
Jovian atmosphere above storm is hundreds of degrees hotter than elsewhere on the planet  
science  

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White-headed vulture  

Joshua Daskin posted a photo:

In Gorongosa NP

 
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Inbreeding has destroyed the English bulldog's genetic diversity  
Decades of extreme selection and inbreeding mean there is little genetic variation left to save the English bulldog from its many severe health problems  
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"I got blisters on my fingers!"  

Stephen R Boyle posted a photo:

Helter Skelter in Greenwich at sunset a few days ago

 
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r0B0t: Automation: Delivery Robots Look Likely for Austin Implementation - VDARE.com  

VDARE.com

Automation: Delivery Robots Look Likely for Austin Implementation VDARE.com “You'd order something as usual online. You'd be offered Starship delivery in the checkout area. And then you'd be notified through your mobile phone when your parcel was ready for delivery. The power is then in your hands,” Harris-Burland said.

 
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r0B0t: The Bachelorette Episode 9 Recap: "Exotic Overnight Dates" - Huffington Post  

Huffington Post

The Bachelorette Episode 9 Recap: "Exotic Overnight Dates" Huffington Post Chase, who acts like an emotionless robot, but this can now be attributed to his parents' divorce, so this has become more palatable to Jojo, who can now turn his dysfunctional-childhood frown upside down. Jojo walks Luke out and they are both crying ... The Bachelorette Recap: 'Double Fantasy'Nashville Scene Ashley Hebert's 'Bachelorette' Men Tell All Surprise Was A Weird, Unnecessary Live UltrasoundBustle The Bachelorette Clip - Ashley Hebert Live Ultrasound - The Hollywood GossipCelebrity Gossip WISN Milwaukee -Wetpaint -Wetpaint all 681 news articles »

 
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r0B0t: Freddie Gray Denied Justice—and the Whole Damn System Is to Blame - AlterNet  

AlterNet

Freddie Gray Denied Justice—and the Whole Damn System Is to Blame AlterNet If we can figure out how to put a robot on mars, then we can figure out how to hold police accountable. It's only complicated if you're ... The fact that the charges were dropped in such a high-profile case has provoked anger, particularly among those ... and more »

 
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r0B0t: Mr Robot season 2 episode 4 review: Init1 - Den of Geek!  

Den of Geek!

Mr Robot season 2 episode 4 review: Init1 Den of Geek! They catch up on the usual Alderson topics: Darlene's panic attacks, Elliot's anger issues and eventually, their dead dad. Elliot opens his closet and shows Darlene that he still has the Mr Robot jacket their father used to wear when he went to work ... 'Mr. Robot' Season 2, Episode 4 Recap: Game of ChessHidden Remote all 82 news articles »

 
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Why You Can Have Your Beanfields Chips And Eat Them Too  

Growing up in Kentucky in the 60's, no one talked about reading food and product labels. The post WWll era had ushered in the high-speed age of American consumerism. Prepared food was considered innovative and fast food chains like Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonalds were viewed as a novelty and a treat when my parents took us there.

I grew up on a steady diet of TV dinners, Big Macs, blueberry pancakes from Perkins, pancakes and apple fritters from Dixie Cream Donuts. Toxins and harmful preservatives were not a part of my daily conversation. Bugles, Fritos and Cheetos were my favorite study snacks, washed down with Mountain Dew or Dr. Pepper after laying out in the sun using a metal refractor, slathered in baby oil tainted iodine to enhance my tan instead of sunscreen. No one worried about the ozone layer or the damage the sun might cause. We swam in chlorine-filled pools and had a sugar-filled Snickers bar as a treat after.

The search for plant-based snacks that taste good
While I wouldn't trade those toxin filled and processed food years for anything, times change and so have my concerns about my diet and that of my family. I read labels on everything I consume and I can honestly say that my children have rarely eaten processed or fast food. In fact my children's taste buds are so trained to crave healthy, plant-based options that Katie, my youngest, at two years of age, once spit out her McDonald nuggets during a surprise visit with a friend's Mom, bluntly stating that they were not like the "real" nuggets we had at home. Being the label reading, conscious consumer that I have become, in our house I only served Morning Star nuggets which are made of tofu.

It's one of my biggest challenges as a mother to find healthy options and not feel like I've deprived anyone's childhood of special treats. I'm always searching the grocery store for the healthiest and best tasting options I can find. In fact, cruising the aisles of Whole Foods on the prowl for healthy snack food my teenagers will love the taste of and I will be happy with it's nutritional value is one of my favorite pastimes. So I was most delighted when I discovered Beanfields Bean and Rice chips.

Beans and rice instead of corn
Beanfields, a family-owned certified B Corp, set out to create plant-based, Non-GMO tortilla chips that tasted good without using corn in 2010. They wanted to substitute that with an ingredient that promoted health, sustainability and ethical business practices - all of which are core to their values.

After much researching on the part of Reed Glidden, the president and founder, his wife and co-founder, Liza Braude-Glidden made the first batch of tortilla chips using beans and rice instead of corn.

The benefits of beans over corn
Corn has a high glycemic index and is more likely to be genetically modified while beans are one of America's superfoods. Beans are the most water-efficient source of protein available. Bean crop production lowers agriculture's greenhouse emission. The USDA lists beans as both a source of vegetable and protein. Planted-based diets help the environment. All of this fits into the Beanfields vision of using business as a force of good and what they call their guiding philosophy, kinder prosperity.

The making of a Beanfields junkie
I have become a Beanfields junkie. One of the many things I love about these chips, which now come in ten yummy flavors including Nacho, Ranch and Barbecue, is that they are certified gluten-free, Non-GMO Project Verified, vegan and allergy-friendly.

But what is equally important in my house is that they taste so good you forget it's a better-for-you snack. They have become a staple in my kitchen, where I offer big bowls of the chips to my children and their friends along with great piles of guacamole. I also consider myself an underground distributor, encouraging all my favorite sandwich shops to keep them in stock.

You can read more about Beanfields and how the Glidden family is revolutionizing the chip market with healthy and good tasting options here. I invite you to give them a taste and let me know what you think.

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Sea Change or PR Gimmick? Starbucks Tries Out Recyclable Cups in the UK  
Few people know that Starbucks uses over 4 billion paper coffee cups per year and that those cups, made by clearcutting forests, are mostly not recycled. But the word is getting out and pressure is ramping up for the coffee giant to walk its talk on sustainability. Today's announcement indicates that Starbucks may finally be starting to change its ways.

Stand, which launched a campaign earlier this year calling on Starbucks to use recyclable paper cups instead of its current cups, is encouraged to see that the company will test out 'fully recyclable' cups in its UK stores. The announcement comes after intense pressure on the company over its wasteful practices in the UK.

Starbucks uses a coffee cup with a thin plastic liner that makes the cups waterproof, but that plastic clogs up recycling mills, which means that in almost all cases, they end up in the trash - even if customers put them in recycling bins. More than a million trees are cut each year to produce the Starbucks cups that quickly pile up in garbage cans - and then landfills - around the world.

In 2008 Starbucks made a public commitment to make its cups recyclable by 2012, then the company extended the deadline to 2015, but there has yet to be a change in the cups. Starbucks has repeatedly asserted that the problem is not its cups but the recycling process, which varies from location to location. The company has suggested that recycling machines and systems around the world should be changed to accommodate its plastic-lined cups. That exorbitant expense doesn't make a lot of sense. How about making a cup, which costs a few pennies, that regular paper recycling machines can accept? If the customer is always right, then Starbucks, one of the biggest customers, and consumers of paper cups in the world, can surely get its cup manufacturers to deliver a better, recyclable cup.

Anyone who grabbed a cup of coffee to go this morning knows full well Starbucks' ability to change our culture. The company has literally transformed the world's relationship to coffee, and we know it has the ability and the innovation to transform its paper cups. We will keep pushing until we see a commitment from the company to switch to fully recyclable cups worldwide.

Already, thousands of supporters have joined Stand's campaign demanding a #BetterCup. Last month, volunteers erected a massive wall in front of Starbucks' Seattle headquarters made of 8,181 cups, which is the amount of cups served every minute of every day by Starbucks.

To find out more about our Better Cup campaign and download a copy of our 'Supermermaid vs. Starbucks Monster' comic, visit www.BetterCup.earth

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Hangover by Hayden Scott  

Hangover by Hayden Scott

Hanging out

Hayden Scott: Photos

 
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Keep It Simple, Stupid; Go For Net Zero Emissions  
Since the signing of the Paris Agreement at COP21, I have been invited to several global events to discuss the text and its impact on business. I have noticed that when it comes to defining the targets for business, the largest focus is generally on Article 2: "the increase in the global average temperature to below 2 ̊C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C." A lot of discussions are based around this statement, looking at the real effect on 'such and such' measures, timing issues, the cross-implications of different measures on each other, challenging the baseline chosen to calculate the increase etc.

Some companies are even now writing a so-called 2°C strategy based on the reduction of emissions compared to business as usual. As if business as usual was still possible and desirable! They rightly speak about transition, but in lengthy terms unfortunately not adapted to the urgency expressed by climate change science.

We are carbon addicts so we are discussing how to overcome our addiction, in a mature way, trying to avoid too much suffering. However we seem to refuse to see the obvious; we are facing a huge transformation of our development model, not Kaizen type progress, and, there will be winners and losers. However, the losers have immense strength and lobbying power. We are in fact in denial of the necessity of change, in denial of our own withdrawal syndrome, as if the danger of not making this deep change was not existential.

Instead of Article 2 we should be focussing on Article 4, which states "...to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century." In plain English, getting to "net zero emissions" between 2050 and 2100.

Having led several turn-arounds, some of multi-billion companies with tens of thousand of people around the globe, I know that communicating in a clear and simple way is the first key success factor of a turn around.

We have run out of time to discuss the target, what we should agree immediately on now is its concrete implementation. The negotiators of the Paris agreement have shown the way in Article 4. It is a clear, understandable, undisputable way to "zero net emissions". We must stop losing time on refining the target and procrastinating, instead we must now go for it.

From the US Navy's KISS ('Keep It Simple, Stupid') design principle in the 1960s, simplicity is often at the centre of management theory. Zero tolerance was once used by New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and has been described as the real key to success in a much lighter challenge, so why not use this simplicity to fight for our civilisations survival?

In our case, although there are different interpretations, everyone understands the baseline that 'net zero' aims for. This is a suitable way, within this kind of complex issue, to motivate and align internally and externally all the stakeholders around a simple but powerful idea. We need to focus on a course of action and not to come back to endless discussions about impact, measurements, why me and not another person or organisation, etc.

There is no contradiction whatsoever between striving to be below 2°C and net zero emissions except one; net zero is simple and actionable, the other is a collective consequence, but not a business goal.

Organisations that see this already are those associated with the B Team for example, where the two go hand in hand; "Achieving the transition to a thriving and just Net-Zero greenhouse-gas emissions economy by 2050 is the best way to operationalize the long-term goal of maintaining the temperature under the 2°C of warming threshold." This is already more ambitious and clearer than the Paris text, targeting the middle of this century, rather than somewhere in the second half.

Last year, Unilever's CEO Paul Polman, B Team member and Chair of WBCSD, called on business leaders to join in: "A target of net-zero emissions by 2050 is not only desirable but necessary. This is the time to redouble our efforts and further accelerate progress to decarbonise our economy. This is not going to be easy, but the earlier we act, the greater the economic opportunities will be."

Some organisations such as IKEA are well on their way, with a goal to be 100% renewable by 2020; producing as much renewable energy as they consume. That commitment to 100% renewable power is gaining support thanks to the RE100 initiative. Shell has now moved ahead of the curve going from a 2°C scenario to a new pathway to net zero emissions. Chad Holliday Chair of Shell and former Chair of WBCSD was in Singapore two weeks ago to present this work.

We must now change the speed and dimension of our actions - choosing this clear way is the first necessary decision to make. We should not choose procrastination and complexity again but now go for a simple meaningful target; zero, nil, nada, niente, rien. Get rid of GHG emissions, stop discussing and just do it.

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Duany: The Promise of Suburbia Has Been Betrayed  



The transect / PlaceMakers

"The promise of suburbia -- to live in nature amid the easy flow of cars -- has been betrayed. Sprawl is not sustainable; its growth chokes on itself," argued architect and urban planner Andrés Duany at the Congress for New Urbanism in Detroit.

Duany calls for using New Urbanism, an approach he and others have promoted for the past few decades, in order to "preserve nature." New Urbanist developments can preserve nature because they can "make cities places people love to live in," so they stop moving to the suburbs, contributing to sprawl. New Urbanist communities, he argues, are also inherently healthy and just, because there people "walk, so they don't get fat," and "you don't need a car to get around." In contrast, car-based communities are "un-just," because the old can't drive cars and the poor can't afford them. Some 50 million Americans don't have cars.

New Urbanism can also result in a more balanced relationship with nature. "In Europe, they had to integrate with nature. In contrast, in America, our relationship with the wilderness has been adversarial." But Duany argues that if we use his model of the transect, which shows how cities can become denser as they move from untrammeled nature on the peripheries to dense urban cores, "we can bring nature into the city. Wildlife habitat can be assigned everywhere. The transect is also for bringing nature in."

Sprawl, Duany argued, is rooted in a dendritic, inefficient, car-based system that must be overthrown with a new grid-based, walkable system. Furthermore, it's one system or the other: "sprawl and new urbanism are incompatible and can't be intermixed."

Unfortunately, the "enemy" -- sprawl -- is backed by a range of "powerful" forces. There are "whole professions, like traffic engineers, who are vested in this system." The solution is to provide these "administrators" with a new set of guidelines they can manage. "They just want to administer something. Let's just change the manual, and then we can change what they administer."

He envisions New Urbanist communities in which there are multiple choices that coincide with human nature, and the stages of life. These communities have a dense core that can sustain nightlife, which is critical for young people, "whose job it is to date and mate." Once they've mated, they find a starter home, perhaps just out of the core. As they grown older and wealthier, they move closer to the periphery, where they have a larger house immersed in nature. Then, when they retire, they move back into a smaller apartment in the urban core.

Furthermore, human nature is to form hierarchies, and New Urbanist communities simply enable that basic tendency. "We can break up communities into wealthy mansions, mid-range, and low-range housing." But for Duany, the key is they all live near each other in walkable communities, which enables a local economy, e.g. the maid and nanny live walking distance from the mansions. Duany is also all for allowing people to chose whether they want to live in a homogeneous or diverse community.

Duany said New Urbanists have enabled these kinds of neighborhoods by participating in writing the U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD)'s Hope VI standards, which enabled 270,000 units of affordable housing to be added in a subtle way to mixed-income communities. "We can integrate but keep the housing for the poor to 10-20 percent."

He concluded that 30-60 percent of Americans want to live in New Urbanist developments where this kind of set-up is possible. "We just need to level the playing field to let the market operate." In these communities, "life is better; people are more satisfied."

F. Kaid Benfield, senior advisor to PlaceMakers, and author of the great book People Habitat: 25 Ways to Think About Greener, Healthier Cities, followed Duany, making many of the arguments outlined in his book. However, he further emphasized the need to better "integrate nature into the urban fabric," perhaps going beyond what Duany and the New Urbanist's transect offers. "We need nature inside cities, the kind that fits well." For Benfield, that largely means mid-size (8 acres or less) and pocket parks, along with lots of trees, green complete streets, and all other forms of small-scale green infrastructure. As an example of a perfect-sized park, he pointed to Russell Square in London, "which is a great size -- just small enough to reach but large enough to escape in."

While landscape architects and designers may find some things to agree with here, what was left out of this discussion was the idea of cities as ecosystems. University of Virginia professor and author Tim Beatley, with his biophilic urbanism, shows that dense, walkable cities like Singapore and Wellington, New Zealand, can also be more biodiverse and create those rich connections to nature that sustain life for many species, even in cities.

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Effects of past tropical deforestation will be felt for years to come  
Even if people completely stopped converting tropical forests into farmland, the impacts of tropical deforestation would continue to be felt for many years to come. That's the conclusion of researchers who have used historical rates and patterns of tropical deforestation around the globe to estimate the resulting carbon emissions and species losses over time.  
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Tomatoes resist a parasitic vine by detecting its peptide  
Tomato plants deter attacks from a parasitic plant that's known to ravage crops by detecting one of its peptides, a new study reveals.  
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Mars Rover Curiosity Gets Smarter  
Curiosity has gotten smarter: the Mars rover now has the capability to select ChemCam laser targets autonomously, allowing the four year-old prospector to choose its own targets for remote evaluation.

ChemCam has been a godsend for qualifying geological targets for closer evaluation by the roving laboratory. It can also provide remote analysis of interesting formations that cannot be physically reached by the rover--for instance, something too high or beyond an obstacle that the rover drivers do not want to risk crossing.

ChemCam--short for Chemistry and Camera complex--consists of a high-powered laser that operates in conjunction with a telescopic spectrometer mounted on Curiosity's camera mast. This technique is called LIBS, for Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy. The laser can be fired at targets up to about 25 feet away, and in the brief moment that a plasma is formed by the extreme heat from the laser, the spectrometer can extract information about the elemental composition of the rock or other target area.

ChemCam has greatly expanded the rover's capability to explore areas otherwise unavailable to Curiosity, and has saved a lot of time by allowing scientists to take a chemical snapshot of an interesting target in order to decide if it merits further, closer investigation by contact tools, such as those on the end of the robotic arm. These include optical instruments for microscopic imaging, the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer and sample gathering for evaluation within Curiosity's onboard lab.

This new capability will allow Curiosity to select targets autonomously, first identifying a promising rock formation, for example, using software with criteria specified by the science team, and then firing the laser and recording the analyses for future transmission to Earth. This is particularly useful when the rover is making a long drive and is not in contact with controllers at JPL, or is otherwise out of contact due to the Mars orbiters that are used to relay information being out of range.

Since it began operation in 2012, Curiosity has used the ChemCam laser method over 1400 times with 350,000 laser bursts. The newfound autonomy should cause the rate of ChemCam investigations to rise appreciably.

More information can be found on Curiosity's website at http://go.nasa.gov/2abitag.

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Sea Slug? Disco Ball? Beautiful Deep-Sea Purple Blob Puzzles Scientists  

"I have no idea. I can't even hazard a guess to phylum," one scientist says. The curious orb was found and captured during a recent Nautilus expedition near California's Channel Islands.

 
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night birds 4 (32)  

gateshead1964 posted a photo:

The millenium bridge and city of london at sunset

 
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night birds 4 (22)  

gateshead1964 posted a photo:

The Globe theatre at sunset

 
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Did Arabic Scholars Discover Evolution in the Ninth Century?  
One thousand years ago, when the United States of America did not exist and Oxford and Cambridge were backwaters of ignorance, the light of human reason shone brightly in places like Tunis, Cairo, and Baghdad. During the Abbasid caliphate for much of the 8th through middle 11th centuries, and also sporadically thereafter, tolerance of certain non-Muslim groups was enshrined in law. This was not as extensive as the constitutionally guaranteed religious (and non-religious) freedoms we enjoy in the West today, but it did mean that non-Muslims such as Musa Ibn Maimun (also known as Maimonides), Hunayn ibn Ishaq, and Yuhanna Ibn Bukhtishu, could not only practice their Judaism or Christianity, but could also make enduring contributions to the social and intellectual life of the then-dominant Muslim culture.

It may not be a coincidence that many aspects of our understanding of the world have roots in this age. Arab and Persian scholars (Muslim and non-Muslim alike) not only translated the writings of the Greeks, but also made original contributions about mathematics, medicine, and social science (among other topics). Regarding biology, one of the more interesting claims that surfaces from time to time concerns evolution:

The theory of biological evolution in its complete form was presented by a great early zoologist, al-Jahiz in the ninth century.

wrote the Turkish theologian Mehmet Bayrakdar in a 1983 issue of the London-based Islamic Quarterly.
But in its complete form?

Not quite. There are indeed some tantalizing quotes that evoke evolutionary ideas from medieval Arabic scholars. The Englishman John William Draper famously referred to "The Mohammedan Theory of Evolution" in his 1874 book History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science, probably in reference to the Arabic scholar Ibn Khaldun, who wrote in his 14th century The Muqaddimah,

creation ... started out from the minerals and progressed, in an ingenious, gradual manner, to plants and animals. The last stage of minerals is connected with the first stage of plants, such as herbs and seedless plants. The last stage of plants, such as palms and vines, is connected with the first stage of animals, such as snails and shellfish ... the last stage of each group is fully prepared to become the first stage of the next group.

And 500 years before Khaldun, al-Jahiz articulated a kind of biological selection in his Kitab al-Hayawan (Book of Animals).

In 1930, the Spanish scholar Miguel Asin Palacios translated one such passage from al-Jahiz:

In sum, no animal can survive without nourishment. The hunting animal cannot escape being hunted. Every weak animal devours those that are weaker; every strong animal cannot avoid being consumed by those that are stronger.... God, in sum, made some beings the cause of life to others, and in turn made these the cause of death to yet others.

These two observations--- continuity of existence across different forms of life (and indeed non-life) from Ibn Khaldun, and a struggle for existence among individuals from al-Jahiz--- are indeed relevant to the contemporary theory of biological evolution. However, this is a far cry from "biological evolution in its complete form". First of all, the goal of al-Jahiz's Book of Animals was, according to the German historian Herbert Eisenstein, "not actually the study of animal species, but a proof of the existence of the Creator that is evident from his creation" (p. 122 in Einfürung in die arabische Zoographie). Moreover, al-Jahiz was a gifted philosopher and theologian interested in biology, not vice-versa. He saw free will and the autonomy of God's creation as the reason why animals were "created" with the means (e.g., claws, fangs, spines) to attack others and defend themselves. According to Einsenstein (continuing the passage quoted above), al-Jahiz wrote that

when you see an animal ... of great danger, and concerning whom Man must be very careful, such as snakes and wolves provided with fangs ... thus may you know ... that God--- sublime and powerful is He--- gives to the steadfast, those who understand that free will and rational experience could not exist if the world were purely evil or entirely good.

Whether or not you think this argument is convincing (and it remains a key part of modern religion's approach to theodicy), the point is that al-Jahiz was less interested in the natural mechanisms by which life became diverse over time than he was in understanding nature in the context of monotheistic philosophy.

Another difference between modern biology and the natural philosophy of the Arab-Persian golden age was, ironically, the reality of the species. The notion that a group of interbreeding animals is thereby distinct from other such groups is not evident in pre-modern Arabic literature. Al-Jahiz was fascinated with hybridization and adaptation, and contemplated if and how environmental factors may have had an influence across generations of humans and other animals. According to another German translation of a passage from al-Jahiz, he wrote that maybe eels arose by cross-breeding fish with snakes. Maybe people from the western Caliphate (what is today Morocco and Algeria) look different from Arabians because of differences in the food and air. These were the kinds of discussions one can find in the prolific writings of al-Jahiz, Ibn Qutaiba, and others of their time. Were they more informed about nature than Europeans in the 9th century? Yes. Did ninth-century Arabs discover biological evolution? No.

As summarized by the Iraqi-British physicist Jim Al-Khalili in his book Pathfinders (and echoed by writers such as James Montgomery and Rebecca Stott), al-Jahiz articulated a mix of natural theology with Lamarckian evolution, in which behaviors and environmental influences of a given animal could have a direct influence on its offspring. This was more than just quoting Aristotle, and Europeans didn't get this far until many centuries later. However, although the Abbasid caliphate played a key role in upholding and advancing human reason, no one there or anywhere else during the middle ages discovered the major principles of contemporary evolutionary biology.

This well-corroborated theory about the mechanisms behind biological diversity recognizes that, in general, what a given animal does over the course of its lifetime (stretch its neck to reach leaves in the treetops, exercise its arms hammering horseshoes) does not directly influence its offspring. Yes, epigenetics and lateral transfer can make detours around the barrier of generational inheritance, but the essence of evolution is about variety, heritability, selection, and constraint. Evolutionary biology is not a static discipline, and in years to come there will be many more discoveries that shake up our understanding of how the mechanism behind biodiversity works. One such recent discovery is that physical laws underpinning cell growth may have a far stronger influence on certain aspects of anatomy than adaptive selection, as demonstrated in 2013 by a study of scale development in crocodiles. This discovery, and many others over the past 150 years, improves (not disproves) our understanding of evolution.

Eager proponents of today's monotheisms sometimes appear very keen to see in their cultural history and holy books indications of modern scientific discoveries. However, it seems to me that the real take-home message of golden age of the Middle East is not its contributions to modern science (and there are many), but the fact that some of its rulers valued ideas at least as much as ideology. Give scholars the resources to be able to study and write, and encourage curiosity about traditions besides your own. Scientific and civil advancements will happen (and have happened) for the same reasons in the 21st century as they did in the ninth.

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Care To Offset All Your Office Sitting? It'll Take Just An Hour A Day  

A new study of over 1 million people finds that doing at least one hour of physical activity per day may eliminate the increased risk of death associated with sitting for 8 hours a day.

 
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Schoolkids Write Book About Orphaned Orangutan  
Writing in "first person orangutan" isn't easy. Just ask 10-year-old Caroline Mulcahy, a fifth grader at P.S. 107 John W. Kimball Learning Center in Brooklyn, New York. She and her classmates spent months during lunch and recess writing and illustrating a book, One Special Orangutan: The Story of Budi, about the plight of orangutans in Borneo.

The story is told through the eyes of a baby orangutan, Budi, who was rescued in December 2014 by International Animal Rescue, an NGO with a rehabilitation facility in Ketapang, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. For the first 10 months of his life, Budi was kept as a pet in a tiny chicken cage and fed only condensed milk--never solid food. "There was little space to move, and only a blanket and squeaky toy," Budi recounts in the book.


First time Budi holds a bottle. Photo courtesy of International Animal Rescue.

"The personal story of this one particular animal helped the kids identify with his situation and build their empathy," says Julie Fissinger, Mulcahy's mother and one of the parent volunteers who helped the students.

Budi's story is not unique. Since the early 1970s, 40 percent of Borneo's forest cover has disappeared, much of it stripped for oil palm plantations, and that trend will likely continue. In Kalimantan, for instance, 80 percent of the orangutan's range isn't protected, and clearing for oil palm plantations is pushing the apes into ever smaller forest fragments.

Searching for food, they venture onto the plantations where agricultural workers, who consider them pests, may kill them. Hunters also target orangutans for meat or the pet trade. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species notes that 2,000 to 3,000 orangutans have been killed in Borneo every year for the past 40 years, representing a loss of more than 50 percent of the original population. The World Wildlife Fund estimates today's population of Bornean orangutans at between 45,000 and 69,000. (Scientists also say there are roughly 14,600 orangutans in Sumatra.)

The killings leave a lot of orphans, like Budi. When Budi was rescued, the one-year-old was in bad shape. His body was swollen from malnutrition. He cried at even the softest touch. He couldn't sit up or walk, and he was too weak to hold his own bottle. It took intensive effort by the team at International Animal Rescue to nurse the young ape back to health.


Budi at baby school. Photo courtesy of International Animal Rescue.

Today he's a very different orangutan. He spends his days at "nursery school," where he climbs, eats, and hangs out with Jemmi, another orphan. "He's making a lot of progress, but being brought up by another species, I don't imagine it'd be easy," says fifth grader Sarah Millward, who helped write and illustrate the book.

The student authors are proud that they can help Budi, and other orangutans, by telling his story and by donating the proceeds of sales of the book to International Animal Rescue.

"It was born out of a love for animals," says Katherine Eban, a founding member of the Parent-Teacher Association's "Beast Relief" Committee, which runs the book project. Parent volunteers from the committee lead writing and illustration workshops for the students, and they organize the children's work into the final book.

A Growing Body of Work

This is the third time that fifth graders at the school have created a book to highlight and benefit an endangered species. The first was One Special Rhino: The Story of Andatu, which tells about the first Sumatran rhino born in captivity in Indonesia. The second was One Special Elephant: The Story of Penelope Petunia, which tells of a baby forest elephant in Dzanga Bai, in central Africa, who is threatened by poachers. (Jane Goodall wrote forewords to both.)


Henry Kurzawa and Maeve Igoe, PS 107 5th graders, celebrate the successful rescue of orphaned orangutan Budi while reading their newly published book. Photo courtesy of Ericka Novotny.

"The book project has become a rite of passage for the school's fifth graders," Eban says.

But its impact spreads beyond the page. For instance, Mulcahy and her mother now volunteer at the local animal shelter. And together with her friends Mulcahy raises money for the shelter with a lemonade stand. "It's simple," she says. "Drink lemonade and help animals."

The work has also affected many of the students' buying choices. "Now before I eat or drink anything, I always read the label and make sure there's no palm oil," Millward says. "It's not okay to be using it when we don't really need it, and it's more helpful for the orangutans to keep the forest whole."

Mulcahy too has stopped eating many things that contain palm oil to help orangutans. But, she admits, "giving up some foods, like Oreos, is hard."

Alan Knight, chief executive officer of International Animal Rescue, is encouraged by the students' efforts. "The fact that Budi's story has inspired the creation of such a wonderful book gives me real confidence for the future," he writes in the afterword.

Indeed, today's students are tomorrow's conservationists, with the P.S. 107 fifth graders a shining example. That alone inspires hope.




Laurel Neme is a freelance writer and author of Animal Investigators: How the World's First Wildlife Forensics Lab is Solving Crimes and Saving Endangered Species and Orangutan Houdini. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

This article was originally published on National Geographic under the title "Schoolkids Write Adorable Book About Orphaned Orangutan" It is republished here with permission. For full article, please click here.

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Why Hinkley Point is a nuclear folly of Titanic proportions  
French utility company EDF is going ahead with plans for a massive new nuclear reactor in the UK, but there are many reasons to doubt it will ever be finished, says Michael Le Page  
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Scenes From the Democratic National Convention (26 photos)  

This week, an estimated 50,000 people have gathered in Philadelphia for the four-day Democratic National Convention. As the delegate votes were tallied, Hillary Clinton made history as the first woman to ever become the official nominee of a major party. Supporters of former candidate Bernie Sanders came as well, making their voices heard and protesting the way the Democratic party has handled the election so far. Gathered here are images of some of the speakers and attendees at this year's DNC.

 
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Cultured Diamonds: A Socially Conscious Girl's Best Friend  


As a lover of jewelry, I've always found anything that sparkles alluring, and diamonds have always had a particular appeal. So, you can just imagine how exciting it was to interview the Director of Pure Grown Diamonds, Suraj Mehta, to learn more about cultured diamonds and how they are taking the diamond industry by storm.

Modern technology has come a long way and actually made it possible to replicate the exact conditions needed to grow diamond crystals in a laboratory. Pure Grown Diamond places a small diamond seed into a tightly controlled environment, where the diamond grows and is able to recreate the natural process above ground; the results are absolutely stunning!



Millennials are currently some of the biggest fans of these pure grown diamonds, with a significant percentage saying they would totally consider buying a cultured diamond as a center stone for their engagement ring. Not only are these lab grown diamonds economically more affordable [30% cheaper than mined diamonds], but they're also the go to choice for the environmentally and socially conscious jewelry connoisseur. Perhaps this is why Pure Grown Diamonds was trending on Hollywood's red carpet this year. Here's more from my enlightening conversation with the Director of Pure Grown Diamonds, Siraj Mehta.

What is a synthetic diamond and how long have these kinds of diamonds been around for?

Let me start by saying that the term "synthetic" is not a term we consider fitting when describing Pure Grown Diamonds, as people often associate this word with "fake" or "inauthentic." We feel that terms such as "cultured," and "lab-grown" are more suitable descriptors. The most accurate though is "Pure Grown Diamond".

A Pure Grown Diamond is a genuine diamond with a different point of origin. Instead of coming from a mine, a Pure Grown Diamond is grown through a proprietary process that has unlocked nature's secret recipe for growing diamonds.

This process is akin to growing exotic flowers in a greenhouse: We create the necessary conditions to grow a diamond atom-by-atom from a carbon seed, and the result is a diamond that is cut, polished, and certified just like a mined diamond. The race to grow diamonds started just over 200 years ago when Antoine Lavoisier discovered that diamonds were made of pure carbon. After a couple of centuries of failed attempts by scientists around the world and a decade of research on the growth side, Pure Grown diamonds, was the first to the consumer with these gorgeous diamonds just over 2 years ago.

How are Pure Grown Diamonds different from natural diamonds?

Pure Grown Diamonds are chemically, physically, and optically identical to mined diamonds. To a consumer as well as a gemologist or a jeweler, the only difference is its point of origin.

Just like a mined diamond, every Pure Grown Diamond is unique. Even though two diamonds might grow together in the same laboratory, they will definitely not be identical. This is because diamonds are grown as a result of a natural crystallization process. The only human intervention is to start the growth, after this nature takes over. They are genuine diamonds with the only difference being their origin.

Would anyone be able to tell the difference between A Pure Grown diamond and the natural diamond with the naked eye?

It is virtually impossible, with the naked eye, to tell the difference between a Pure Grown and a mined diamond, since both are diamonds.

Pure Grown Diamonds, though, can often be recognized by the fact that they are rare Type IIa diamonds. Type IIa diamonds are only 2% of the world's supply, extremely rare and famous for their unmatched brilliance, scintillation and fire. You do however need specialized equipment to find this rare characteristic. Some famous Type IIa diamonds are the famous Koh-i-Noor diamond or the Elizabeth
Taylor diamond (formerly known as the Krupp Diamond).

They could also be recognized by the certificate number that is inscribed on the girdle of every Pure Grown Diamond over 0.30 carat in weight. These certificates are issued by third party, highly reputable labs like the International Gemological Institute (IGI) and Gem Certification & Assurance Lab (GCAL).

Pure Grown diamonds have been referred to as the socially and environmentally conscious diamond, can you tell me more about this?

A Pure Grown Diamond is by far a more sustainable and eco-conscious choice when compared to that of mined diamonds. In an environmental impact assessment report conducted by Frost & Sullivan in 2014, it was determined that that the environmental impact of growing diamonds is seven times lower than diamond mining.

Land Disturbed
Frost & Sullivan report noted that because next to no soil is displaced or disturbed in growing diamonds. The environmental impact on land is Nil compared to mined diamonds where open pit, coastal, and seabed mining is estimated to disturb nearly 1300 times more soil per carat than lab-grown diamonds.

Carbon Emissions
Even more drastic is the difference in carbon, nitrous oxide (NOx) and sulfur oxide (SOx) emissions between lab grown and mined diamonds. According to Frost & Sullivan, mined diamonds emit a staggering 1.5 billion times more carbon, NOx, and SOx per carat production than that of lab-grown diamonds, which result in little to no emissions of significance.

Water Impact
Frost and Sullivan report also notes that there is "no detrimental impact associated with water usage such as the discharge of waste water or pollutants in water bodies" in the production of lab-grown diamonds. Mined diamonds, however, have had a much greater impact on introducing pollutants into water bodies, though the industry has aimed to reduce this over time.

Overall, Pure Grown Diamonds emerge as a more sustainable choice allowing humans and nature to work harmoniously so that resources can be preserved now while ensuring that future generations will be supported.

Whose primarily buying Pure Grown diamonds right now?

Several consumer studies show that demand for lab-grown diamonds has grown significantly in a short period of time. According to a study done by NPD Group Diamond Tracker, which collected sales data from 3,950 specialty retail jewelers in America from January 2015 - January 2016, it was found that sales of lab grown diamonds tripled within a year's time, with 1-carat round diamonds being the most popular selection.



Regarding consumers of lab-grown diamonds, it has been found that millennial audiences in particular have shown a strong, growing interest in the lab-grown diamond category. According to a study conducted by MVI Marketing surveying men and women aged 21-35 years, 55% reported that they would consider buying a lab-grown diamond as the center stone for an engagement ring, with 65% agreeing that they should be referred to as diamonds because they are made of the same chemicals as mined diamonds.

Moreover, nearly half of those surveyed referenced eco-conscious and human rights motives as to why they would choose lab-grown, while 18% said because Pure Grown Diamonds are more affordable than mined diamonds (nearly 30% more affordable).

Like the natural diamond, are there different qualities with the Pure Grown diamond, as well? If so, what should potential buyers look for?

Yes there are different qualities and consumers should look for exactly what they would were they buying any diamond: The 4C's - Cut, Color, Clarity and Carat weight, as defined in a Gemological certificate from well-known independent labs like the International Gemological Institute and the Gem Certification & Assurance Lab (GCAL).

Lab-grown diamonds are subject to the same variables affecting its quality as mined diamonds, as these diamonds are grown in a process that recreates a natural growing environment. Therefore, it is important that buyers consider the diamonds four C's - cut, carat, color, and clarity - when selecting a lab grown diamond, just as they would when choosing a mined diamond. Because of this, it is important to understand that once the conditions are made and the diamond is in the process of growing, we have no control over how the specifications of the diamond when it is finished, so a diamond cannot be grown to fit a customer's specific needs.

Why do you think these cultured diamonds are not given the same status as natural diamonds yet? What do you think would need to shift in order to change this perception around?

We feel that with a reported 55% of consumers already favoring lab-grown diamonds over mined, according to MVI's study, lab grown diamonds have in fact garnered the same status as mined diamonds, and this perception will only grow over time. It is an astounding achievement that in just a few years, lab-grown diamonds have already appealed to more than half of consumers in such a short amount of time. With today's consumers growing more and more socially and environmentally conscious, we feel that Pure Grown Diamonds values of sustainability and eco-consciousness align perfectly with that of the consumer's mindset. This alignment of values has allowed the status of Pure Grown Diamonds to flourish and solidify, and it will continue to do so over time.

Pure Grown Diamond's mission is to continue to provide beautiful, quality diamonds that are affordable and conflict free for their loyal customers. To find out more about Pure Grown Diamonds you can go to their website: www.PureGrownDiamonds.com

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Pending Deal on Montreal Protocol Amendment Second Only to Paris Agreement  
World climate leaders meeting in Vienna have laid the foundation for an amendment to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, the global treaty that phased out ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). The amendment would address climate-damaging hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), the refrigerant chemicals that replaced CFCs but that can trap heat in the atmosphere at levels a thousand times higher than carbon dioxide and that can "undo much of our progress in reducing other carbon emissions under the Paris Climate Agreement," said Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy in a blog post.

Under the current draft of the agreement, expected to be concluded in October in Kigali, Rawanda, more affluent nations would virtually eliminate HFCs by the 2030s, whereas poorer nations would do so about a decade later.

McCarthy told Bloomberg BNA that the seriousness with which countries are taking the amendment owes in part to regulatory actions that the United States has taken under its Significant New Alternatives Policy program to drive the market for HFC alternatives.

"That's what the SNAP program does," McCarthy said. "So it has effectively driven domestic action that is putting the U.S. in a leadership position. We fully expect that with the actions we've already taken, that we'll be able to meet the reductions that the international community will be embracing [under a Montreal Protocol amendment]."

An agreement to reduce HFC use would be the biggest single measure to curb climate change since governments adopted the Paris Agreement, thereby pledging to keep global warming to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit that increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The HFC amendment can help avoid 0.5 degrees Celsius of warming by century's end compared with business-as-usual growth, reports Climate Change News.

Speaking Friday at the conference of parties to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that the conference was as important a gathering as another he hosted on combatting the Islamic State. "What you are doing here right now," he said, "is of equal importance, because it has the ability literally to save life on this planet."

Climate Change and the U.S. Presidential Election

Last week, delegates to the Republican National Convention approved a party platform that downplayed use of renewable energy and rejected the Paris Agreement, a carbon tax, and other action on climate change. This week, delegates to the Democratic National Convention addressed climate change as a "real and urgent threat."

In their party platform, Democrats described climate change as "too important to wait for climate deniers and defeatists in Congress to start listening to science" and said government officials must take any steps they can to reduce pollution.

"We believe the United States must lead in forging a robust global solution to the climate crisis," the party platform states. "We are committed to a national mobilization, and to leading a global effort to mobilize nations to address this threat on a scale not seen since World War II. In the first 100 days of the next administration, the President will convene a summit of the world's best engineers, climate scientists, policy experts, activists, and indigenous communities to chart a course to solve the climate crisis."

In addition to calling for a tax code that creates incentives for renewable energy, the platform aims to generate half the country's electricity from clean sources in the next decade.

Inside Climate News presents a chart illustrating just how differently the two parties view climate and energy issues.

Emissions from Commercial Jets Next Up for Regulation

The EPA on Monday proposed an "endangerment finding" under the Clean Air Act for greenhouse gas emissions from certain types of airplane engines.

The proposal--which finds that airplane engines contribute to pollution that endangers public health and contributes to climate change--parallels the 2009 endangerment finding for motor vehicles under another section of the Clean Air Act and follows on the heels of the International Civil Aviation Organization's proposed regulations to cut carbon from aircraft.

"Addressing pollution from aircraft is an important element of U.S. efforts to address climate change," said EPA Acting Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation Janet McCabe, noting that aircraft are the third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.

No timetable was set for release of a rule regulating emissions from aircraft, but The New York Times reports that it could come in early January.

The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

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Here is the father, waiting while his pups receive their check-ups

 
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Pup #4

 
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Pup #4

 
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Pup #4

 
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Pup #3

 
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Pup #3

 
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_DSC4649-2nd processed-Julie Lawrence  

Wolf Haven posted a photo:

Pup #2

 
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_DSC4652-2nd processed-Julie Lawrence  

Wolf Haven posted a photo:

Pup #2

 
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_DSC4582-1st processed-Julie Lawrence  

Wolf Haven posted a photo:

Pup #1

 
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_DSC4521-Julie Lawrence  

Wolf Haven posted a photo:

 
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_DSC4522-Julie Lawrence  

Wolf Haven posted a photo:

 
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_DSC4523-Julie Lawrence  

Wolf Haven posted a photo:

Pups in a crate

 
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_DSC4520-Julie Lawrence  

Wolf Haven posted a photo:

 
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_DSC4519-Julie Lawrence  

Wolf Haven posted a photo:

 
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_DSC4462-second pup-Julie Lawrence  

Wolf Haven posted a photo:

Tiny muzzle for tiny pup.

 
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_DSC4407-first pup-Julie Lawrence  

Wolf Haven posted a photo:

Animal care staff had to go into the den and pull the pups out.

 
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_DSC4385-mama waiting-Julie Lawrence  

Wolf Haven posted a photo:

Red wolf mother waits for the return of her four pups.

 
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Zika, other mosquito-borne illnesses pose threat to travelers  
Mosquitoes in the Aedes family can transmit not only the Zika virus, but also dengue and chikungunya. Travelers visiting regions affected by these diseases should take steps to protect themselves, warn experts.  
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Iranian-Swedish Researcher Among Winners Of Top European Math Prize  

Sara Zahedi was one of 10 mathematicians — and the only woman — to win one of this year's European Mathematical Society prizes, which are awarded once every four years.

 
science