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Activists Worry About Oil Spill Due to North Sea Platform Gas Leak

      

This is an undated handout photo issued by Total E&P UK Ltd of Total's Elgin PUQ (Process/Utilities/Quarters) platform. (AP/TOTAL E&P UK Ltd.)

Associated Press - foxnews.com - March 29, 2012

Environmental groups warned Thursday they fear an oil spill could be triggered at a North Sea offshore platform that has been leaking highly pressurized gas since the weekend.

A flame is still burning in the stack above the Elgin platform, which stands about 150 miles off the coast of Aberdeen, eastern Scotland, after a leak of flammable gas Sunday-- prompting all 238 staff to be evacuated on Monday.

Platform operator Total S.A. insists there is no threat of any explosion under current weather conditions, but said that surveillance flights have detected a sheen around the platform estimated to extend over 1.85 square miles.

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Exxon's Big Bet on Shale Gas

Drill pipe ready for use on a rig at Exxon's Johnson Ranch site outside Fort Worth

by Brian O'Keefe - CNN - April 16, 2012

America's most profitable company now produces about as much natural gas as it does oil. CEO Rex Tillerson thinks the fracking party has just begun.

FORTUNE -- For Rex Tillerson fracking is more than a revolutionary approach to drilling oil and gas -- it's part of his personal history. Simply mention the word to the CEO of Exxon Mobil (XOM) and he starts reminiscing about his days as a young engineer.

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Looking Back on the Limits of Growth

      

Chart Sources: Meadows, D.H., Meadows, D.L., Randers, J. and Behrens III, W.W. (1972) /  Linda Eckstein

by Mark Strauss - Smithsonian Magazine - April 2012

Recent research supports the conclusions of a controversial environmental study released 40 years ago: The world is on track for disaster. So says Australian physicist Graham Turner, who revisited perhaps the most groundbreaking academic work of the 1970s,The Limits to Growth.

Written by MIT researchers for an international think tank, the Club of Rome, the study used computers to model several possible future scenarios. The business-as-usual scenario estimated that if human beings continued to consume more than nature was capable of providing, global economic collapse and precipitous population decline could occur by 2030.

(GO TO THE SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE ARTICLE)

Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update

The Club of Rome

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Building Resilience in African Nations is Paramount to Development

STUTTGART, Germany - Nancy Lindborg, assistant administrator for USAID's Bureau of Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA), addresses staff of U.S. Africa Command, March 30, 2012, as part of the Command Speaker Series. Lindborg talked about USAID's efforts in Africa and discussed how U.S. AFRICOM can better work with the interagency organization to achieve common objectives. (U.S. AFRICOM photo by Danielle Skinner)

submitted by Samuel Bendett

U.S. AFRICOM Public Affairs - by Danielle Skinner

STUTTGART, Germany, Apr 3, 2012 — In developing countries experiencing chronic crises, such as those in the Horn of Africa, disaster risk reduction is often just as important, if not more so, than humanitarian response and recovery, according to a senior official from U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

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Pesticides to Blame for Bee-Colony Collapse

A bee is seen sitting on a Marigold flower in a field of a private plantation near the village of Pishchalovo, about 220 km (138 miles) east of Minsk in this July 18, 2011 file photogaph.  Credit: Reuters/Vasily Fedosenko/Files

(LINKS TO THE 3 STUDIES AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST)

SEATTLE TIMES - A new study released yesterday, and two published last week, strengthen the case that neonicotinoid pesticides are key drivers behind declining bee populations — alone and especially in combination with other stressors. This class of pesticides covers 143 million acres of U.S. countryside, and more damning studies are awaiting publication. (Read this article in link below)

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/northwestvoices/2017923620_beeslet.html

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Video - Everything Old is New Again: Time to Get Growing with Biochar and Victory Gardens

The TrackerNews Project / J.A. Ginsburg, editor - April 5, 2012

Straight biochar can be a little tricky for the novice to use, so Black Revolution is a blend of biochar, nutrients and sustainably harvested coconut husks. Compared to conventional growing media, which is made from composted factory farm manure, Bornean peat moss and Kenyan vermiculite, it has a better carbon footprint right out the bag (the recycled burlap coffee bean bag). According to Aramburu, each bag contains enough carbon negative goodness to offset emissions from 60+ miles of driving.

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An Interview with TDR’s New Director, John Reeder

TDR Director John Reeder with Pan American Health Organization Director Mirta Roses Periago

(TDR) - The Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases.

TDR’s new Director, John Reeder, is overseeing the development of a new strategy that will create a smaller and more focused organization. He has been working with staff, co-sponsors, governing bodies, funders and other key stakeholders to identify the unique values and skills that TDR can bring to the global health research field. He wants to provide more impact and value to the low and middle income countries burdened with infectious diseases of poverty like malaria and river blindness. One of the ways he is doing this is by engaging more closely with the World Health Organization’s regional offices. Recently he met with the Pan American Health Office’s Director Mirta Roses to discuss research strategies and collaboration – the first of visits to all regional offices.

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Handheld Plasma Flashlight Rids Skin of Pathogens

Dear Friends,

I agree with Eric- big implications, along with Janet's Sharklet forward (and the myriad of other antibacterial metallic compounds out there), make for a greater possibility of mitigating our losing fight with bacteria.  

Out in our neck of the woods, the Black Canyon Infectious Disease Forecasting Station has produced hundreds of forecast libraries for our pathogen-antibiotic resistance pairs.  How we use this information is to forecast 5 to 10 years out where the current trends of antimicrobial resistance is taking us.  Those of us who are Trekkies call the process "frequency-modulated shielding for the hospital".  What is interesting is our patterns are highly local-specific.  Meaning, if you use standard antibiotic references in the clinic such as the Sanford Guide to Antimicrobial Therapy, you would be grossly misled in terms of what antibiotics are effective against, say, Pseudomonas.  Most physicians do not use local antibiograms, and we are the first (to our knowledge) to incorporate forecasting in the decision process of what antibiotics to allow for use in the hospital.  

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Chinese Biogas Energy Plants (Bio Digesters)

submitted by Albert Gomez

Chinese Biogas Energy Plants (Bio Digesters)
http://www.alibaba.com/manufacturers/anaerobic-digester-manufacturer.html

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ETI Seeks Energy-from-Waste Demonstrator Plant Partners

submitted by Albert Gomez

theengineer.co.uk - April 4, 2012

The Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) is seeking partners for a new £13m project to help design and build a next-generation energy-from-waste demonstrator plant.

The aim of the project, which is part of ETI’s Bio Energy programme, is to commercially demonstrate the ability of how such a plant can create energy from waste and produce energy at efficiencies higher than previously produced.

In a statement, ETI said it is hoped the plant could be designed by 2014 and operational by 2016.

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