Daily Archives: June 30, 2008

Environment News

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This summer may see first ice-free North Pole from PhysOrg.com
(AP) — There’s a 50-50 chance that the North Pole will be ice-free this summer, which would be a first in recorded history, a leading ice scientist says.
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Climate change causing significant shift in the species composition of coastal fish communities from PhysOrg.com
A detailed analysis of data from nearly 50 years of weekly fish-trawl surveys in Narragansett Bay and adjacent Rhode Island Sound has revealed a long-term shift in species composition, which scientists attribute primarily to the effects of global warming.
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Continue reading Environment News →

I never believed it was tomatoes

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I am not entirely sure that the FDA has actually identified a tomato with Salmonella on it. The tomato hypothesis was based on recall data, which is notoriously iffy. Not totally useless, but iffy.The FDA, gutted by years of uncaring neglect by evil Republicans, today finds itself incapable of addressing the food safety issue, it would seem. Over 800 cases of food poisoning since April 10th is apparently considered a bit high. And there seems to be no reasonable explanation or anything close to an explanation as tomatoes become increasingly innocent looking. Continue reading I never believed it was tomatoes →

Delay of childbirth and cesarean section: There may be a link.

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A study just out in PLoS Medicine suggests that an increasing trend of delaying childbirth is associated wiht a rising rate of the use of cesarean delivery. The explanation appears to be impared uterine function.From the editor’s summary:

Though it was not studied here, the researchers hypothesize that impaired uterine contractility may be a consequence of prolonged stimulation of the uterus by estrogen and progesterone, resulting from a prolonged interval between menarche and first birth. Further research is needed to understand the determinants and management of dysfunctional labor in older women to help design strategies for reducing population cesarean delivery rates without adversely affecting maternal and infant outcomes.

Continue reading Delay of childbirth and cesarean section: There may be a link. →

Stoned Nation: International study of drug use places US in the lead.

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A study released today in PLoS Medicine compares alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drug use across seventeen different countries participating in the World Health Organization World Mental Health Survey Initiative.Alcohol seems to be widely used in the studied countries, tobacco less so but fairly evenly used. Major variation was found with marijuana and cocaine use, with the US and New Zealand at the top of the list for pot, and the US as a significant outlier with cocaine use, to the extent that if cocaine was not used in the US, it seems unlikely that it would even be a major part of a study such as this one. Continue reading Stoned Nation: International study of drug use places US in the lead. →

US Government Says No to Solar

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I find it hard to believe that the government has ignored the need for solar energy to the extent that it seems surprised that anyone wants to build new solar plants. From the New York Times:

Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.But the decision to freeze new solar proposals temporarily, reached late last month, has caused widespread concern in the alternative-energy industry, as fledgling solar companies must wait to see if they can realize their hopes of harnessing power from swaths of sun-baked public land, just as the demand for viable alternative energy is accelerating.

The Water Wars an’Woes: Bottled vs. Tap?

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Do you drink bottled water or tap water? Water from a cooler (which is a big giant bottle) or from a filter built into a refrigerator or sink? Or do you Britta?(Yes, let me be the first to verb that noun …. )Increasingly we see resistance to bottled water. The Britta ads (one hour in a meeting, forever in a landfill) … even if they are inaccurate, as most bottles are probably recycled … may have an effect. I have seen, heard of, and even experienced the admonishment of anti-bottle activists (though I quickly add: I almost never drink bottled water. But I do occasionally. But probably, the bottle you see me drinking out of contains water I just put in there to refill it.)Anyhow, there is a sea change in the air. Continue reading The Water Wars an’Woes: Bottled vs. Tap? →

Technology News and Stuff

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Microsoft to stop selling Windows XP on Monday from PhysOrg.com
(AP) — Microsoft Corp. is scheduled to stop selling its Windows XP operating system to retailers and major computer makers Monday, despite protests from a slice of PC users who don’t want to be forced into using XP’s successor, Vista.
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Synchronize directories with Komparator and KDiff3

f you work some of the time on your laptop and some of the time on your desktop box, making sure that your work is updated on both machines is a must. Many tools can help you accomplish this, from command-line tools such as scp and rsync to generic graphical applications like Konqueror or Krusader, to more specific tools like Unison. Komparator and KDiff3, a couple of KDE applications with interesting features, may offer better ways of syncing your work.Komparator can search and synchronize any two directories. It uses KIO slaves, which lets you compare not only standard directories, but also protocol-based pseudofolders such as smb:// (Samba folders), ssh:// and ftp:// (remote directories via SSH and FTP), and fonts:// (local fonts). Its latest version is 0.8, dated from October 2007, and it’s available under the GPLv2. ..KDiff3 provides more functions than Komparator, but not all are relevant to synchronization. Working with directories, KDiff3 goes further than Komparator — it can compare as many as three directories at the same time (instead of two), simulate the merge operations, do the synchronization in a more “hands-off” way, and even produce backups. More importantly, it can also help you compare specific files (think source files, if you’re a programmer) by highlighting their differences, then merging them. In KDiff3, a merge need not be simply one file overwriting another. If you’ve ever modified a file on one machine and then carelessly made another change to a copy of the file on a different machine, common merging procedures would opt for one of the files, making you lose the changes on the other one. With KDiff3, you could get to keep both changes.

I’m not vouching for either of these as I have not tried them for this purpose, but it looks worthy of consideration.See Also:Keyboard Shortcuts in OpenOffice.org