Good Morning all,
I'm about to go to sleep 45 minutes early. Hooray! Today I'd like to mention two articles. First is the article about the female who won a "team" medal by competing in, and winning all the events that a team would compete for, on her own. WOW! Second, I'd like to bring up the article that says there has been a decline in damage to the coastal waters! This means we're progressively cleaning up our beaches (coastal water areas)! Yippee!
Anyway, I hope you are all having wonderful days, and I hope you enjoy today's posts. See you tomorrow!
Today's Top 5:
1. Breastfeeding Halves Rheumatoid Arthritis Risk (Yahoo News)
2. Sweet Sorghum, Clean Miracle Crop for Feed and Fuel (physorg.com)
3. Vietnam Siezes a Ton of Monitor Lizards (Earth Times)
4. DOE Report: Wind Could Power 20 Percent of US Grid by 2030
5. Girl Wins State Team Title Alone (Highschool Rivals)
Honorable Mentions:
1. 58 People Rescued from Quake-hit SW China (People's Daily Online)
2. Coastal Waters Show Decline in Contaminants Over 20-Year Period
Today's Top 5:
1. Breastfeeding Halves Rheumatoid Arthritis Risk
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080513/hl_nm/rheumatoid_breastfeeding_dc
Tue May 13, 1:55 AM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Women who breastfeed their babies longer are less likely to get rheumatoid arthritis, Swedish researchers said on Tuesday.
Mothers who breastfed for 13 months or more were half as likely to get the painful joint condition as women who never breastfed, said Mitra Pikwer and colleagues at the Malmo University Hospital in Sweden, who led the study.
"Although it is difficult to separate the effect of breast feeding from that of childbirth, our data suggest that rheumatoid arthritis is inversely associated with long-term breastfeeding, rather than with the number of children born," they said.
The researchers said they wanted to see if a larger, community-based study would echo earlier studies on the links between breastfeeding or the use of oral contraceptives and the condition affecting about 20 million people worldwide.
Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease caused when the body confuses healthy tissues for foreign substances and attacks itself.
Some drugs to treat the condition seek to reduce inflammation directly while others tone down the immune system's response, which can leave some patients vulnerable to infections and cancer.
The Swedish team compared 136 women with rheumatoid arthritis and 544 women of similar age without the disease. They also found that breastfeeding for between up to 12 months made women 25 percent less likely to get the joint condition.
The findings bolster previous research linking breastfeeding to a reduced risk of the disease. But, as with other studies, the Swedish teams said they did not know the exact reason why.
Breastfeeding is known to provide multiple benefits for the baby and studies have shown the practice may also protect mothers from breast and ovarian cancers.
The study published in the British Medical Journal's Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases also suggested that oral contraceptives -- thought to offer protection because they contain certain hormones -- did not seem to make a difference.
(Reporting by Michael Kahn)
2. Sweet Sorghum, Clean Miracle Crop for Feed and Fuel
http://www.physorg.com/news129876999.html
Published 05:56 EST, May 13, 2008
A sorghum field in Argentina. The plant could be the miracle crop that provides cheap animal feed and fuel, said scientists working on a pilot farming project in India
The hardy sweet sorghum plant could be the miracle crop that provides cheap animal feed and fuel without straining the world's food supply or harming the environment, said scientists working on a pilot farming project in India.
"We consider sweet sorghum an ideal 'smart crop' because it produces food as well as fuel," William Dar, Director General of the non-profit International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) said in a statement.
Sweet sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) is the world's fifth largest grain crop after rice, corn, wheat and barley.
It grows in dry conditions, tolerates heat, salt and waterlogging, making it an ideal crop for semi-arid areas where many of the world's poor live, ICRISAT agronomist Mark Winslow said in an interview with AFP.
The plant grows to a height of 2.6-4.0 meters (8-12 feet) and looks like corn. Its stalks are crushed yielding sweet juice that is fermented and distilled to obtain bioethanol, a clean burning fuel with a high octane rating.
It has high positive energy balance, producing about eight units of energy for every unit of energy invested in its cultivation and production, roughly equivalent to sugarcane and about four times greater than the energy produced by corn.
Sweet sorghum requires little or no irrigation, limiting the use of fuel-burning water pumps that emit carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas contributing to climate change, Winslow said.
"With proper management, smallholder farmers can improve their incomes by 20 percent compared to alternative crops in dry areas in India," said Dar.
In partnership with Rusni Distilleries and some 791 farmers in Andhra Pradesh, India, ICRISAT helped to build and operate the world's first commercial bioethanol plant, which began operations in June 2007.
Sweet sorghum in India costs 1.74 dollars to produce a gallon (3.78 liters) of ethanol, compared with 2.19 dollars for sugarcane and 2.12 dollars for corn, the research institute said.
Similar public-private-farmer partnership projects are also underway in the Philippines, Mexico, Mozambique and Kenya, as countries search for alternative fuels, India-based ICRISAT added.
The United States and European Union are also very interested in making biofuel from sweet sorghum, Winslow said.
The US Department of Agriculture is sponsoring an international conference in Houston, Texas, in August to examine the plant's potential in ethanol production.
In addition to ethanol, "I think (sorghum) is going to be one of the two big crops in the tropics" that supply biofuel such as ethanol, the demand for which "far exceeds the supply" on the world market, Winslow said.
"It's a win-win situation" for developing nations since it allows them to save money they now spend on oil imports and invest it in sweet sorghum-ethanol production in dry areas.
He said India could meet its entire fuel needs with 100 bioethanol plants like the the one in Andhra Pradesh, which produces 40,000 liters (10,568 gallons) of ethanol every day.
Unlike corn, sweet sorghum is not in high demand in the global food market, so its use in biofuel production would have little impact on food prices and food security, ICRISAT said.
Sweet sorghum is grown on more than 42 million hectares (107 million acres) in 99 countries, with United States, Nigeria, India, China, Mexico, Sudan and Argentina its leading producers.
3. Vietnam Seizes a Ton of Monitor Lizards
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/205019,vietnam-seizes-a-ton-of-monitor-lizards.html
Posted : Tue, 13 May 2008 08:17:03 GMT
Author : DPA
Category : Nature (Environment)
Hanoi - Police in Vietnam have seized more than a ton of live wild monitor lizards being smuggled from central Vietnam to the country's northern provinces, where they might have been destined for China, officials said Tuesday. The lizards were found Sunday packed in wooden boxes on a truck heading north from Quang Tri province, 580 kilometers south of Hanoi, said Tran Xuan Vinh, head of the province's Economic Police Department.
"We seized 1,012 kilograms of monitor lizards and arrested the driver of the truck immediately," Vinh said.
The driver of the truck, Vu Van Duong, 36, confessed to the police that he was hired to transport the animals to the north, the police official said.
"We have launched an investigation into the case to find the leaders of the ring," Vinh said. "The reptiles were probably destined for restaurants in either Hanoi or China."
The police have transferred the lizards to the province's Forest Management Department, which will release them into the wild.
Smuggling wild animals is rampant in Vietnam, where eating wild animals is an elite habit of the rich. Vietnam seized more than 66 tons of smuggled wild animals last year.
According to Vietnamese law, smuggling wild animals is subject to a prison term of up to seven years and a cash fine of 20 million dong (1,250 dollars).
4. DOE Report: Wind Could Power 20 Percent of US Grid by 2030
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/05/doe-report-wind.html
By Alexis Madrigal May 12, 2008 4:03:05 PMCategories: Clean Tech, Energy
A new report from the Department of Energy claims that wind turbines could generate 300 gigawatts by 2030, which would power about 20 percent of the US electrical grid.
The forecasting scenario would require tremendous growth in the wind industry, which currently produces about 17 gigawatts of electricity, or a little over one percent of total capacity.
All by itself, such a change could reduce carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation (think: coal and natural gas plants) by 25 percent and drop water consumption by four trillion gallons. These benefits could be achieved at a cost of about six bucks per person a year, say the report's authors.
"To dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance our energy security, clean power generation at the gigawatt-scale will be necessary, and will require us to take a comprehensive approach to scaling renewable wind power," said Andy Karsner, the DOE's assistant secretary of energy efficiency and renewable energy in a release.
Currently, fossil fuels generate 85 percent of American energy, and about 70 percent of our electricity. Renewables (outside hydroelectric dams) are only responsible for a couple percent of our current electricity capacity. However, wind power has been expanding rapidly, growing 45 percent in 2007, as its cost has become competitive with traditional fossil fuel sources.
Major business players from General Electric to oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens have gotten behind its deployment. Pickens, for example, is planning a $10 billion, 4-gigawatt peak production wind farm. A major driver of these investments is the price of oil, which is sitting over $120 a barrel, with long-term futures contracts also over $100 a barrel. The cost of natural gas is pegged to the price of oil, so rising oil costs make alternative energy investments more attractive. At the same time, scaling wind technologies is bringing their price down.
But there are major questions about the actual electricity production that wind farms put out. As many wind critics point out, four gigawatts of wind power isn't the same as four gigawatts of coal because the wind isn't always blowing, reducing their average watt ouput. Many grid engineers also think wind is a nightmare because it is so inconsistent, a problem that mass deployment of wind will make more and more apparent.
It's worth noting that while the Department of Energy paid for the 248-page report, it did use information from a Black and Veatch consulting report commissioned by the American Wind Energy Association. The full report is available at 20percentwind.org.
Yet among the current renewable options, wind and solar thermal appear to be the only technologies that could produce power at the utility-scale. Traditional solar photovoltaics have long payback times and are even trickier for the dumb electric grid to handle than wind.
While the report is certainly a milestone for envisioning a cleaner energy future, the US remains many steps away from implementing a cohesive energy policy that would drive major innovation in the systems that produce and deliver energy around the country.
Sure, we need clean power sources, but we need a grid that can handle a more diverse set of power sources. For both solar thermal and wind, that's going to mean new transmission lines, unless a technology like Google-backed eSolar's neighborhood-scale solar thermal plants take off.
We need smart meters that make it easier to install small-scale distributed power for consumers who can make the significant up-front capital investment in solar panels. Then we need a smarter grid overall. I've been speaking with a lot of folks working on this problem.
Last Friday, I heard some exciting ideas from Roland Schoettle, CEO of grid management software company Optimal Technologies . He told me that by optimizing the way that power moves around the grid, utilities could switch off (at least) 10 percent of their power generation. Why? Right now, they have to generate more power than the actual electrical load, just in case. Better visibility into the grid would allow companies to run their operations with less slack. Also, a supply-side efficiency play doesn't require the huge capital investment that new wind farms do.
What's incredible: it's going to take a major overhaul of the electrical infrastructure just to meet rising demand! Add in the need for replacing dirty generation with renewables and you see why prominent investors say that clean tech is going to be bigger than the Internet and the only hope for the US economy.
5. Girl Wins State Team Title Alone
http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=806832
May 12, 2008
AUSTIN, Texas -- Bonnie Richardson ran. She threw. She jumped.
And when it was time to hand out the team trophies, Richardson accepted the 1A team championship for Rochelle High School -- by herself.
Richardson accepted the state team track title by herself
Bonnie Richardson of Rochelle High School scored 42 team points to win the Texas 1A track title.
Richardson was the only Rochelle athlete to qualify for the state meet and stunningly won the team title. University Interscholastic League officials said it was the first time they can remember a single athlete winning a girls' team title.
It's happened before on the boys' side, but not since former Baylor Bear and Pittsburgh Steeler Frank Pollard did it for Meridian High School in the 1970s, said UIL Athletics Director Charles Breithaupt.
"This totally blows me away," the freckle-faced Richardson said while holding the trophy with a gold medal draped on her neck. "This is amazing. I had no idea it was even possible."
Richardson's title march began with field events on Friday when she won the high jump (5 feet, 5 inches), placed second in the long jump (18-7) and was third in the discus (121-0).
On Saturday, she won the 200 meters in 25.03 seconds and nearly pulled off a huge upset in the 100 before finishing second (12.19) to defending champion Kendra Coleman of Santa Anna. Richardson, a junior, earned a total of 42 team points to edge team runner-up Chilton (36).
It was a good thing the 1A events were split over two days because Richardson said the heat -- temperatures were in the high 90s both days -- might have knocked her down. She laughed off a suggestion that she could have won more if UIL rules didn't limit individual participation to five events.
"I don't think I could handle any more," she said. "It was hot and I was tired."
Charlotte's punch! Many outstanding girls athletes have dominated state meets, but few cross over from the sprints to the field events with Richardson's success, Breithaupt said.
"The way she did it is really impressive," Breithaupt said. "A lady like that could be a heptathlete."
Rochelle is about 85 miles east of San Angelo, and Richardson's high school doesn't even have a real track. The football field has a ring of caliche and grass around it.
So how does she train?
"Watch for potholes," she joked. "We have a track about 10 miles down the road and train there usually."
Richardson's coach, Jym Dennis, suspected she could do something special in the team category, but didn't tell her on the trip to Austin because he didn't want to make her nervous.
"I was hoping she'd get a few gold medals to put her over the top and she did," Dennis said. "She's an amazing athlete. I think she could win a lot of events."
As a sophomore, she competed in the high jump, long jump and discus. She won the long jump but didn't medal in the others. On Saturday, she was surprised by her second-place finish in the 100.
"Kendra and I have been battling all year. I was amazed I stayed with her. I didn't think I was that fast," she said.
Richardson also plays tennis and led her basketball team to the state semifinals last season.
"I'd play football if my parents would let me," she said. "Not quarterback. Defense."
Honorable Mentions:
1. 58 People Rescued from Quake-hit SW China
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6409781.html
16:39, May 13, 2008
Rescuers have saved 58 people trapped under collapsed building and rubbles in quake-hit regions in southwestern China, said the spokesman of the China Seismological Bureau (CSB) here Tuesday.
Rescue teams sent by the CSB, Sichuan Province and Chongqing Municipality have rescued 21 people, 22 people and 15 people respectively, said CSB spokesman Zhang Hongwei.
2. Coastal Waters Show Decline in Contaminants Over 20-Year Period
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080512090627.htm
ScienceDaily
May 12, 2008
NOAA scientists have released a 20-year study showing that environmental laws enacted in the 1970s are having a positive effect on reducing overall contaminant levels in coastal waters of the U.S. However, the report points to continuing concerns with elevated levels of metals and organic contaminants found near urban and industrial areas of the coasts.
"It's interesting to note that pesticides, such as DDT, and industrial chemicals, such as PCBs, show significant decreasing trends around the nation, but similar trends were not found for trace metals," said Gunnar Lauenstein, manager of the NOAA Mussel Watch program. "What is of concern is that there are contaminants that continue to be problematic, including oil-related compounds from motor vehicles and shipping activities."
The report, "NOAA National Status and Trends Mussel Watch Program: An Assessment of Two Decades of Contaminant Monitoring in the Nation's Coastal Zone from 1986-2005," is the first that presents national, regional, and local findings in a quick reference format, suitable for use by policymakers, scientists, resource managers and the public. The findings are the result of monitoring efforts that analyze 140 different chemicals in U.S. coastal and estuarine areas, including the Great Lakes.
"We need to ensure the safety of our coastal waters for the rich resources they provide," says John H. Dunnigan, NOAA assistant administrator of the National Ocean Service. "This program shows that although our coasts are under tremendous pressure, policymakers and the public are able to work together to produce positive results."
Significant findings from this report include the following:
Decreasing trends nationally of the pesticide DDT are documented with a majority of the sites monitored along the Southern California coast.
Decreasing trends also were found for the industrial chemicals PCBs. The Hudson-Raritan Estuary, one area of the country where some of the highest concentrations of these chemicals were found, now shows 80 percent of monitored sites with significantly decreasing trends for this pollutant.
Tributyl-tin, a biocide used as a compound to reduce or restrict the growth of marine organisms on boat hulls, was found to have greater than anticipated consequences as it affected not only the targeted organisms, but also other marine and fresh water life as well. First regulated in the 1980s, this compound is now decreasing nationally.
The NOAA Mussel Watch Program also quantifies contaminants that are still entering the nation's waters and two major groups raise concern:
Oil related compounds (PAHs) from motor vehicles and shipping activities continue to flow into coastal waters daily. Because NOAA has been monitoring these areas for extended periods, baseline data already exist to help define the extent of environmental degradation. For example, PAH levels following the 2007 Cosco Busan oil spill in San Francisco Bay showed concentrations at the monitoring site near the spill were the highest ever recorded.
Flame retardants known as PBDEs are a new class of contaminants currently being evaluated by NOAA to determine whether they are increasing in coastal waters and what effects they may have on both marine and human health. NOAA plans to issue a report on flame retardants in coastal waters later this year.
NOAA's Mussel Watch Program, founded in 1986, is the nation's longest continuous national contaminant-monitoring program in U.S. coastal waters. The program keeps collected tissue samples frozen so that overlooked or newly emerging contaminants can be retroactively analyzed, as is currently being done with flame retardants.
"The Mussel Watch Program 20-year assessment is a concise and informative review of contaminant monitoring in the nation's coastal waters," said Jack Schwartz with Massachusetts Marine Fisheries. "This report should well serve readers who may not necessarily be conversant with scientific literature on contaminant monitoring and fate and effects."
The report is available online at http://NSandT.noaa.gov
Adapted from materials provided by National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration.
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