Daily Science Dose

A new study, one being praised for its thoroughness, shows that heavy red-meat eaters are at a higher risk of death from pretty much everything.

The National Cancer Institute looked at the cases of 500,000 patients and in particular questionaires they filled out detailing their intake of red meat and processed meats, as well as other factors like smoking, exercise, fondness for vegetables and fruits, how much they ate, yada, yada, yada. They split the respondents into five groups and the group you were in related to how much red and processed meat you ate. Level 1 the lowest, level five the highest.

It seems that over the years from 1995 to 2005, about 48,000 of the men in the study died, as well as almost 24,000 women. And guess what? A larger percentage of those heavy meat consumers died than the level 1’s.

The quintile who ate the most red meat had a higher risk for overall death, death from heart disease and cancer than the men and women who ate the least red meat.

The researchers said thousands of deaths could be prevented if people simply ate less meat.

“For overall mortality, 11 percent of deaths in men and 16 percent of deaths in women could be prevented if people decreased their red meat consumption to the level of intake in the first quintile,” [Rashmi] Sinha’s team wrote. –Reuters via Planet Ark

Well, what do you know… Red meat is bad for your health. I’m sure cows would agree with me here.

Not only does beef cost a hefty price in terms of your health, but do you know how bad the beef and meat industry is for the larger world? Pollution, water usage, crop diversion to animal feed, the flatulence…cows and pigs are dirty creatures. Chickens and turkeys are, too. Especially the way we raise them.

Not only that, but in the US, we consume far too much meat, due to our relative affluence and a snappy campaign from the Beef Industry to the tune of Aaron Copeland. There’s a lot of people in this world are vegetarians not by choice, but by necessity.

But in this land of meat and potatoes, and heart attacks, obesity, high cholesterol, hyper-tension, diabetes, cancer…when will we stop believing the ad campaigns? Just say no.

And I love the response from the American Meat Institute, an industry front.

But American Meat Institute executive president, James Hodges, said: “Meat products are part of a healthy, balanced diet and studies show they actually provide a sense of satisfaction and fullness that can help with weight control. Proper body weight contributes to good health overall.” –ibid.

Brilliant. I wonder how many of those heavy red meat consumers are achieving “proper body weight.”

red meat, processed meat, beef industry, National Cancer Institute, death, obesity, heart disease, cancer, pollution, water, Americans, health, food, agriculture

If you have ever been to Yellowstone National Park, you may have noticed that rotten-egg smell around the myriad hot springs and geysers. Well, that intoxicating aroma is just that, in toxicating. Ok, it’s not necessarily the aroma that is toxic, but some of the stuff in the hot springs are toxic, including arsenic.

Huh, hot springs have arsenic in them? Why is it possible for me to soak my lily-white butt in them?

Ok, not all hot springs are quite as acidic as some of the hot springs in Yellowstone’s Norris Geyser Basin. That is where researchers from Montana State University concentrated their surveys of a certain one-celled algae named Cyanidioschyzon that grew in mats on the top of the pools of hot water. Tim McDermott, a prof at MSU, noticed years ago that the mats that nearly took over small pools in the winter virtually disappeared by summer. And like any good scientist, he wanted to know why.

It seems that the algae — red algae — had a little trick up its sleeve. Cyanidioschyzon can chemically change the arsenic that is found in these hot springs, and the more acidic the water, the more arsenic is there for the red algae to “eat.”

The cyanidioschyzon “oxidizes, reduces and converts arsenic to several forms that are less toxic than the original.” This finding has some rather serious implications. It may point out new ways for life to exist in extreme conditions, even those on other planets or moons.

“It gives us insight into how life adapts to extreme environments,” Rosen added. “If life can grow at high temperatures and high concentrations of heavy metals like arsenic, life might be able to evolve on other planets or moons such as Titan or Enceladus.”

McDermott said the scientists conducted basic research that may have implications someday for acid mine drainage and acid rock drainage remediation efforts.

“Any time you learn anything about eukaryotic algae and their potential application for bioremediation, that’s always good,” he said.–Terra Daily (SPX)

Arsenic is one of the more toxic by-products of coal-mining, so if there is some way that a teensy weensy little microbe can break down toxic forms of arsenic into less harmful variants, then this could be a very important discovery in terms of bioremediation of toxic sites and waste ponds.

algae, arsenic, toxic, Yellowstone National Park, Yellowstone, hot springs, geysers, mining, cyanidioschyzon, Montana State, Norris Geyser Basin

A new Gallup poll has been released that shows that more Americans believe that the threats of global warming are exaggerated. When asked the question, “Thinking about what is said in the news, in your view is the seriousness of global warming …generally exaggerated, generally correct, or generally underestimated”, 41 percent of respondents answered that they felt the seriousness is generally exaggerated.

Ok, what news programs are they watching? Other than a few “specials” on CNN, I never see reporting that makes a big deal about climate change; in fact, most stories I see add more doubt that necessary. More than a few environmental and media watchdog groups feel that the media, in their pointless pursuit of fair and balanced reporting, often add global warming sceptics, not matter how much of a minority they are in the scientific community, just to appear to be objective.

Now, as a quasi-reporter, I can give the media props for trying to appear objective, but when the media is owned by men like Rupert Murdoch and ran by men like Michael Eisner and Sumner Redstone, then it is only natural to question the objectivity of a news organization that is part of a multinational corporation whose main purpose is to keep the profits rolling in. Furthermore, the “news” is no longer the pace where one goes for hard reporting and in-depth analyses of current issues — no, sadly, the news is nothing more than entertainment. (Sorry, Keith Olberman, I usually end up agreeing with you, and even though I am also a liberal thinker, I cannot call you an objective newsman.)

If you want to look at a handy chart to see who owns what in the media, click here.

I went to school for screenwriting, and in those classes, the number one lesson is “create conflict.” And for some reason, the News Media have taken that same lesson for fiction and drama and have added that ingredient to the objective news. Sometimes reporting the news should report the story itself, and not try to make a huge dramatic production of it, but adding players that have nothing to do with the story itself, much like those global warming deniers.

The worst part is that you often see the same “naysayers” on all the shows. They just make money by going around the news curcuit, bringing their own mics, mindlessly disagreeing with the science being presented by scientists that are actually working in the field and not going around the news circuit commenting on other scientists’ work.

Back to the poll…

The largest group responding “generally exaggerated” are, ta dah, Republicans.

Gallup attributes the rise to Republicans and independents believing media coverage of global warming is exaggerated. In the past 12 months alone, the ranks of Republican doubters grew from 59 percent to 66 percent, and independents from 33 percent to 44 percent. Among Democrates[sic], the rate remains about 20 percent. –Environmental Leader

Go figure…And do you notice how the spikes in the poll are in election years?

global warming, sceptics, news, media, reporting, balanced, Gallup poll, CNN, Republicans, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Eisner, Sumner Redstone, election, science, politics, objectivity, bias in media

The space shuttle Discovery finally launched Sunday evening from Cape Canaveral, after several delays due to a hydrogen leak and worries over the hydrogen valves. The shuttle’s mission is to get to the International Space Station to install the last solar panel arrays on the ISS to make it fully operational, as well as switching out an ISS “resident”. Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata will be moving in, and U.S. astronaut Sandra Magnus will be returning home on Discovery’s return flight.

Despite the troubles that plagued its liftoff, Discovery will only shorten its mission by one day and a space walk. Luckily, the ISS crew can accomplish the space walk’s goals on their own, once the shuttle leaves for Earth. NASA says that all other mission directives will go forward as planned. The major part of that mission is the transport and installation of the final and 11th truss segment, which are the solar wings that provide power to the station. These final “wings” will support a full-time crew of six at the ISS.

But just when science starts to get boring, yet another chunk of space debris, a piece of an old Soviet satellite threatens the International Space Station, the second time in the last week. NASA feels that the ISS is safe, as of this writing, but is monitoring the “erratic” movements of the 4-inch item that has been floating around since the satellite’s mysterious break-up in 1981.

The problem is that the Shuttle is not at the ISS yet, and won’t be docking at the Space Station until Tuesday. The space junk will arrive first, and if the ISS does have to power up some engines to move out of the way, the shuttle will also have to adjust its course. I guess that’s not much of a problem.

Anyway, space debris seems to be becoming a bit of a nuisance for space missions. In high school, I was on the debate team the year that the resolution was to increase space exploration, and I remember all the evidence I had about space debris becoming a problem in the near future. That was like 20 years ago now, and it looks like the alarmists were right.

Space may seem infinite, but our number of safe orbits is not.

space shuttle, NASA, Discovery, International Space Station, ISS, space debris, space junk, orbit, missions, astronaut

That’s kind of a strange thought, huh, a lifeboat in space. I wonder how long that lifeboat would sustain a person or persons, considering how long it could take to ready shuttles for rescue missions.

The three astronauts(kosmonauts) aboard the International Space Station got a nasty phone call today. It was NASA calling, and a chunk of space junk was headed right for the ISS. No time to fire an engine to nudge the vessel out of the way of impact and besides another piece of debris was in the way, the crew instead climbed into the Soyuz lifeboat. Luckily, the five-inch wide piece of space litter whizzed by the Space Station, and eleven minutes after entering the lifeboat, the astronauts returned to the station.

A spokeman for NASA told the New York Times that the threat of collision posed by the piece of space debris was not huge, but having the crew go into the lifeboat was an “abundance of caution.”

This is the fifth time since becoming operational in 1998 that space debris has threatened the International Space Station so much that the lifeboat maneuver was an option.

By the way, I was being rather glib about the Soyuz lifeboat earlier. The Soyuz is not technically a lifeboat per se, but it is the ship that takes the crews to the ISS as well as returning them to Earth. Here is a picture of the Soyuz docked at the International Space Station.

As the name would imply, the Soyuz is the Russian equivalent to the US space shuttle, in that it is used in the transport of people and equipment to the Space Station. The Soyuz program started back in the 60’s for the then Soviet’s moon mission.

International Space Station, NASA, space debris, space junk, satellite, orbit, Soyuz, lifeboat, space shuttle, US, Russian, Soviet

After 8 long, long years of a presidential administration who couldn’t separate their religious beliefs from scientific facts, President Obama changed the science “climate” in the White House with the stroke of a pen.

Yesterday, not only did President Obama overturn the Bush limits on embryonic stem cell research, but he also signed a memo to his science adviser to choose only the best experts in their scientific fields, rather than those scientists that are willing to change outcomes, omit data and manipulate evidence to fit certain ideologies. The new directive also calls for increased protections for those who uncover inappropriate handling of science or “whistleblow” on bad science.

The idea, the president said in remarks before an audience of lawmakers, scientists, patients advocates and patients in the East Room, is to ensure that “we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology”: a line that drew more applause than any other. Irv Weissman, who directs an institute at Stanford University devoted to studying stem cells, called the declaration “of even greater importance” than the stem cell announcement itself. –NY Times

Well, praise the lord and hallelujah. The Bush Era was downright hostile to science in many aspects — you can read more about that stuff here and here and here. And those examples are all from only the last few months of Bush’s Reign. Before that, numerous reports were released detailing the Bush Admin’s penchant for asking scientists to add “doubt” to the science behind global warming and climate change, to delete info about contraception on federal websites, and just generally use science to its own ends rather than scientifically-sound ends.

Will this mean that all policy will suddenly become better? Probably not, but at least there is an understanding in our national leadership that science is not our enemy.

As a science writer and teacher, I couldn’t be more pleased at Obama’s attempt to change the presidential attitude toward intelligence and reasoning, but it is just that, an attempt. Still, to have that kind of thinking in such an influential office is a breath of fresh air.

President Obama, science, stem cell research, embryonic cells, Bush, global warming, policy, whistleblower, global warming, contraception, ideology, conservative

It’s funny. I was watching Science Channel HD last night, and after a Killer Asteroids show, a show came on about Planet Hunters. And then this morning, I find out that the Kepler Telescope is being launched today. Weird. It’s like the Universe is trying to tell me something…like write about planet hunting.

After years and years of using Earth-based telescopes to find planetary cousins, NASA is moving the base of operations (well, the “eye” of operations) to an Earth orbit in order to get past the cloudy, hazier Earth atmosphere. One of the obstacles that planet-hunting scientists have is that atmosphere, and much like the Hubble Telescope, imaging of distant objects gets waaay better off-planet.

The Kepler Telescope has been designed with planet hunting in mind, and in particular Earth-alikes. Named for the guy who formulated the laws of planetary motion, Johannes Kepler. The key to finding a planet is patience, obviously, but also a keen eye. As planets are not stars, seeing them is a bit tricky. Astronomers have to look for “wobbles” in a star’s light, as seen from our perspective. The wobble or slight dip in the star’s brightness signifies that something is moving (or has, as looking at lights in space is like looking back in time) across the star’s face. Earth would be just a wobble across our Sun to those living across the Milky Way.

So, NASA is sending up the Kepler to look for wobbles…for three and a half years. In fact, a true wobble won’t be detected for those three years. The Kepler will be looking at a specific patch of sky up to 3,000 light years away in the vicinity of the constellations Cygnus and Lyra.

Kepler will stare at the region for at least 3 1/2 years, measuring the light from 100,000 stars every half hour with a 95 million-pixel camera to watch for the slight dip in a star’s brightness that signals a planet moving across it as seen from Earth. It’s the equivalent of trying to spot a flea crawl across a car headlight from miles away, NASA has said. –Space.com

Once a wobble is found, and found again the next two years, to find another Earth-like planet, the planet has to be within a certain distance from whatever star it calls its Sun. Too close, like that little planet found last month by the European’s COROT space telescope, and the planet may be way too hot. Too far, and it could be too cold. Usually, the presence of water is the benchmark for Earth-iness. Of course, the size of the exosolar “sun” also matters, as a larger sun will provide more heat to planets farther away, and vice versa.

Kepler launches tonight (March 6) at 10:49 EST with a back-up window again at 11:13pm EST. If you are along the East Coast, try to get out and find the newest addition to the firmament as it heads towards orbit.

Kepler, Earth, NASA, telescope, space, Hubble telescope, space exploration, Cygnus, Lyra, planet hunting, planets, Milky Way, Sun, COROT, stars, universe, Science Channel

Yeah, when you take their cigarettes away…

No, but seriously, it seems that some bad behavior may not be because of crappy parenting — oh, wait. It is because of crappy parenting, namely smoking while pregnant. Some kids have a genetic variant that gets triggered by those prenatal smokes and those kids turn into bad kids.

A new study brought to us by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (a subset of the National Institutes of Health) has shown that exposure to smoke before birth raises the risks for behavioral problems in children and teens. The tobacco affects the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene variant, which is associated with the monoamine oxidase enzyme. This enzyme happens to regulate those nice neurotransmitters like dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, serotonin. Something goes wrong in the regulating and well, you got yourself trouble, right here in River City.

And get this, the study shows that the increased risk for bad behavior is different for boys and girls. MAOA has another variant, -L, and if a boy has low MAOA-L activity, he is more likely to have disruptive behavior issues. Quite conversely for a girl — she is more likely to be bad if her MAOA-L is high-activity. The activity levels mean how much or little of the enzyme MAOA is being produced. Also, in girls, it seems that the high-risk girls are prone to reading emotional cues as aggressive, which in turn makes the girls lash back aggressively. And the more mothers smoked, the higher the risks for behavior problems.

The last National Survey on Drug Use and Health (2006-7) showed that 426,000 pregnant women aged 15-44 were current cigarette smokers. I hope those truth ads are helping reduce this number. But then again, if smoking while pregnant produces out-of-control teenage girls, maybe it’s not all bad — Ask Maury.

smoking, drugs, cigarettes, tobacco, prenatal, exposure, smoking while pregnant, monoamine oxidase A, MAOA, gene, enzyme, neurotransmitters, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, serotonin, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health

Word is that Saturn has a new moon. This small, small, small moon might actually be called a moonlet, but the research is still out on that as the cameras on the Cassini probe are not able to get a clear picture of this new moon in Saturn’s faint, icy G-Ring.

From NASA’s explanation:

This sequence of three images, obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft over the course of about 10 minutes, shows the path of a newly found moonlet in a bright arc of Saturn’s faint G ring.

In each image, a small streak of light within the ring is visible. Unlike the streaks in the background, which are distant stars smeared by the camera’s long exposure time of 46 seconds, this streak is aligned with the G ring and moves along the ring as expected for an object embedded in the ring.

Cassini scientists interpret the moving streak to be reflected light from a tiny moon half a kilometer (a third of mile) wide that is likely a major source of material in the arc and the rest of the G ring. Debris knocked off this moon forms a relatively bright arc of material near the inner edge of the G ring, the most visible part of the ring in these images. That arc, in turn, leaks material to form the entire ring. –NASA

So what’s the diff between a moon and a moonlet? Moonlets are way smaller, sure; but as that is not an exact measurement, but you can think of moonlets as asteroid-sized for the most part (as small as 100 m). Moonlets are too small to have gravitational pull in so far as to collect surrounding debris in large enough quantities as to clear the surrounding space in their orbits, like a larger Saturn moon would. Because a moonlet does not create a clear view of itself, due to the other stuff around it, they are harder to see. In fact, so hard to see that moonlets of Saturn have only just recently been discovered.

These are the so-called “propeller moons” that were found in 2004 within Saturn’s A-Ring.

Before this new moonlet was noticed, the G-Ring was a mystery to scientists, as the other rings of Saturn were associated with a moon or moons. But now that a moonlet body has been found, scientists are hoping that this new moonlet can give them clues as to how rings form. Theory thus far has it that a larger moon broke up and shattered, forming the glorious rings of Saturn. The newer moonlets discovered as of late may provide clues as to their origin, but also may give scientists insight into how new moons aggregate out of smaller material and grow larger to develop a gravitational pull.

Just in case you were wondering, the rings get their letters from their sequence of discovery. Starting closest to Saturn, it goes D, C, B, A, F, G and E.

Images from NASA/JPL

Saturn, Cassani, JPL, NASA, moon, moonlet, G-ring, rings, gravity, orbit

In the late 1950’s, two scientists working at UCLA came up with a process in which fresh water can be made from seawater. It’s a little thing called reverse osmosis. One of those UCLA guys, while working at Ben-Gurion in Israel, had an idea to use the same kind of process to create energy.

It’s quite simple. The way that osmosis works with fresh versus seawater, water will naturally move from a less-concentrated solution (fresh water) to a more-concentrated solution, i.e. the salty water, and once something moves, it creates kinetic energy, and energy is energy, people. You just have to figure out a way to optimize and harness it.

And that is what this Sidney Loeb fellow wanted to do. He patented it anyway in 1973, and named the process Pressure Retarded Osmosis (gee, I wonder if you could get away with naming it that today). But with osmosis, you need a membrane that is permeable to something like water and not to something else, say salt. The water moves from fresh to salty, creating a flow, if enough pressure is present. The amount of pressure is key, and if you doubt me, think of a shower with really low water pressure. Yeah, exactly.

With enough pressure, you can move turbines, and turbines run generators, and yep, you got power. A group in Norway is working on new and improved membranes that can actually produce the pressure (about 12 atmospheres) needed to create power, which was the sticky point since 1973. The Norwegians are looking at plans to build a prototype power plant in a fjord near Oslo, a great location in terms of ample supplies of both fresh and seawater.

The Dutch group working on similar plans for their own prototype and they have come up with the term Blue Energy. The Dutch plans also include a series of batteries, powered by the salt water. Blue Energy uses the movement of the ions present in salt water, the + Na and the - Cl. It makes me think of how a solar panel works, using ions to create an electron flow which creates electricity.

So far, it seems that a fifth of the power that the little pressure retarded osmosis systems produce are needed to pump the water, so obviously, things are going to have to become a lot more efficient before we start replacing all the coal plants with osmosis plants. So designing the shape of the membrane “tubes” will become important, to maximize surface area, but also be as compact as possible. And then there is maintenance and cleaning of said membranes…and a limited number of suitable locations…constructing in hard-to-reach places that will require new roads…

Besides that, it’s brilliant. Clean, non-obtrusive, safe for the environment and wildlife…The Europeans are obviously getting creative.

reverse osmosis, osmosis, UCLA, desalinization, fresh water, seawater, salt water, pressure retarded osmosis, PRO, membrane, electron flow, ions, electricity, power, kinetic energy, energy, green energy, Blue Energy, Oslo, Norway, Netherlands

As Martin Prince says at the conclusion of his class president pre-election speech, Keep watching the skies…

And tonight you will be rewarded. We will again get a lovely sight in the Western sky when a 10% crescent moon will be very close to a 20% crescent Venus, which is the second brightest object in the night sky. If you remember back in November, a crescent Moon aligned with not only Venus, but also Jupiter. It was pretty, indeed, but now, Venus is brighter.

But wait, Venus is going to be in its crescent form, right? Why would that be brighter than say a full Venus? And the answer to that, my friends, is that Venus is actually closer to the Earth when in its orbit at the point that it appears as a crescent to Earthlings.

Did you also know that you can see Venus during the daytime right now? It’s that bright. If you have a clear day (unlike me today in Portland, Oregon), get outside and try to find a shady spot from the sun’s direct rays into your eyes. Find the slight light of the thin sliver of the Moon, which will be directly east from the Sun. Scout a few “thumbs” away from the Moon, and you will find Venus. By the time the sun sets, Venus will be on the right side of the Moon from our perspective in the Western Hemisphere. In fact, when the show is at its best, the Moon will look like a coy, tight-lipped smile with a Venus beauty mark off to the right. 2 degrees right, to be exact.

Viewing will be best from sundown for about three hours before both the Moon and Venus set. And yes, a telescope is handy, but this show is for all to see. If you are lucky, you may also see a Russian Kosmos satellite move through the Moon-Venus alignment.

night sky, Moon, Venus, crescent, skywatching, Martin Prince, western hemisphere, Jupiter, align, Sun, Earth, astronomy

After reading this next study, I am kind of wondering as to why looking at toenail clippings would be the preferred method for measuring the level of arsenic in a human body. Is it because it is easy and non-intrusive, cheap, and a part of the body that is ripe for the study of bioaccumulation? Or is it some foot fetish’s odd way of getting his jollies? I’m hoping it’s the first reason.

Anyway, without further ado, today’s dose is about toenails and arsenic and England. England was the original hotbed for environmental degradation back in the earlier years of the Industrial Revolution — you know, lots of mining and no consideration of producing and disposing of rather nasty waste by-products. Well, some of that nasty stuff was arsenic, and in addition to that, there were arsenic mines that also lead to a issue of arsenic pollution in Great Britain.

Scientists from the University of Leicester, Notthingham Trent University, and the British Geological Survey have developed a relatively easy and painless (although perhaps a little gross) way to measure environmental arsenic in a person’s body — toenails. Toenails grow slowly, building matter and along the way picking up chemicals and in this case, elements that accumulate in our bodies. Add a little acid to those nails, let them dissolve and a little “inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry” and you’ve got yourself a good way of finding out how much arsenic that person has been exposed to over long periods of time.

Mark Button [of the University of Leicester] added: “This preliminary research indicates that people living close to a former arsenic mine have elevated levels of arsenic in their toenails. However, the potential health risks in this case, if any, are not yet clear and no arsenic related health issues have been reported. A large-scale and more detailed biomonitoring study is required to confirm these initial results.”

Dr Jenkin, lecturer in Applied Geology at the University of Leicester said: “This is the first time that the chemical form of the arsenic in the toenails has been measured - that can tell us something about how it got in there and possible risk factors. — SPX via TerraDaily

The only problem with the testing is that as of yet, the researchers are not quite sure how “concentrated” the amount of arsenic in a toenail is and how that affects the measurement of said arsenic. It could be that the human toenail concentrates arsenic and makes it look as though there are high levels, when in fact it’s very low levels over a longer period of time. That makes it harder to determine how it relates to harmful effects that can occur from exposure to arsenic, like cancer of the lungs or kidneys.

But it’s a start…

arsenic, toenails, bioaccumulation, chemicals, mining, waste, England, Industrial Revolution, Leicester, Nottingham Trent, University, British Geological Survey, cancer

This news is a couple of weeks old at this point, but it’s never too late to complain about it, nonetheless.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is obviously still griped with the Bush-era, pushover-for-Big-Business philosophy when it comes to regulating children’s toys and other products. I guess when it comes to testing for lead, some prices are too high.

Last (this) year when all those toys were (are) being recalled, Congress in their infinite wisdom decided to pass some legislation to protect consumers against manufacturers and their distributors when it comes to taking short cuts or using cheaper and more dangerous materials in the manufacture of children’s goods. Sounds good, yes? Well, it would be if our government would bother to enforce some rules every now and then.

The CPSC decided to give manufacturers and distributors another year before they have to start testing products before selling them to an unwitting public. That’s right, another year before said companies will have to test for lead in the paint used on your kids toys. You’d think that for starters the Consumer Product SAFETY Commission would want a company to test their products before someone gets sick or before the costs of a massive public recall. But no, it’ll be another year before anyone will be testing your child’s toys.

According to the LA Times article on the subject, the CPSC spokesperson said that to start testing today would not be feasible and the time frame was unrealistic.

Ensuring the safety of products given to our smallest and most vulnerable citizens should always be feasible. But again, it is just another example of a business’ bottom-line coming before your safety and health.

Larry Mestyanek, owner of Los Angeles company TAG Toys, thinks the stay will save him $50,000 in testing fees. He’s been fielding calls from customers every day asking whether his toys have been tested and whether he can explain the law, so he appreciates the reprieve.

But it’s too late to save money for Albert Lee, owner of boys clothing manufacturer Monster Republic in Los Angeles. He said he has been rushing to test his clothing since he heard about the law in mid-December. It cost him “a solid month of worry and stress,” plus a few thousand dollars, he said. — LA Times

Wow, $50,000 is worth more than a child's health...

Consumer Product Safety Commission, CPSC, recall, toy, children, health, lead, products, regulation, safety, testing, Congress

Last week, a US satellite collided with a Russian satellite. And this accident could be just the beginning.

Since the launch of Sputnik, Americans and the former Soviet Union raced each other to send more and more satellites into space. And most of that hardware is still up there. It’s called space debris, and in the fifty years that man has been exploring the vacuum that envelopes the planet, there have been more than 6,000 satellites launched into orbit, half of which are not longer functioning. And now, as more and more nations are joining the Americans, Russians, and the Europeans in placing more potential debris into the low-orbits, the problem of space debris may get a whole lot worse.

There is an estimated 14,000 objects that are larger than 4 inches or 10 centimeters. The US and Russia actively track about 17,000 objects that are floating around in space for fear that these objects may collide or even penetrate something like the International Space Station, the Hubble Telescope and its cousins, or the ever-smaller US Space Shuttle fleet.

Worse yet, some of that junk up there is radioactive.

Currently, 44 radiation sources from Russia are parked in the burial orbit. They are: two satellites with unseparated nuclear power units (Cosmos-1818 and Cosmos-1867), fuel assemblies and 12 closed-down reactors with a liquid metal coolant, 15 nuclear-fuel assemblies, and 15 fuel-free units with a coolant in the secondary cooling loop. They are to spend no less than 300 to 400 passive years in the orbit. That is enough for uranium-235 fission products to decay to safe levels.

The United States is another contributor to the high levels of radiation in near-Earth space. In April 1964, its Transit-SB navigation satellite with a radio isotope generator aboard failed to enter orbit and broke into pieces. While burning up in the atmosphere, it scattered about a kilogram of plutonium-238 over the western part of the Indian Ocean north of Madagascar. The result has been a 15-fold increase in background radiation around the world. A few years later, the Nimbus-B weather satellite with a uranium-235 reactor crashed into the Indian Ocean. Today, there are seven American radiation sources circling the Earth in orbits ranging from 800 kilometers to 1,100 kilometers, and two more in near-geostationary ones. –Ria Novosti

After the US-Russian collision, Russia is being warned by scientists that wreckage could land in Siberia. The Kosmos line of military satellites have been known to carry nuclear reactors on board. So far, the Russians are not confirming if the satellite involved in the collision is indeed radioactive, but they seem to be taking the warnings seriously, especially as Lake Baikal is in the area that wreckage may affect.

satellite, US, Russia, collision, space debris, Sputnik, Siberia, military, radioactive, wreakage, Lake Baikal

Maybe. NASA thinks that it may have a star on its hands that could possibly be flaring due to quakes on the surface of the star. The quakes occur, not because of vulcanism like here on Earth, but because this particular star has super-powered magnetic fields that are so intense they rip apart the surface of the star when they move.

Neat.

Let’s start at the very beginning. BANG. Ha, ha, get it?

There is this star, see, and it’s 30,000 light years away from Earth. The star is named SGR J1550-5418, which isn’t very romantic, and it’s located in the constellation, Norma, which is even less romantic. This SGR J1550-5418 is a neutron star.

A neutron star is what’s left over after a supernova event. After a star collapses onto itself, the stuff left over are neutrons, the same sub-atomic particles that comprise an atom’s neucleus. You can think of a neutron star as a really big atomic neucleus that is super dense. This neutron star is about one and half times the mass of our Sun, but all that is compacted into a sphere with a diameter of only about 12 miles.

Well, this SGR J1550-5418 is a special kind of neutron star. It’s a “soft-gamma-ray repeater.” There have only been six of these soft-gamma repeaters found so far. What happens is that the star occasionally flares out, that’s right, gamma rays. Luckily for NASA scientists, just this last summer a new telescope, the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space telescope, was launched to study these very same gamma rays.

Theory has it that soft-gamma-ray repeaters that are known as “magnetars” flare due to “quakes” in the surface crust of the star. The magnetar have such powerful magnetic fields that they effectively rip open the surface and allow gamma-rays to erupt forth into space. Hopefully, with the Fermi on the case, scientists will be able to test the theory about starquakes. The Fermi will be able to see through the bursts and find the structures within.

neutron star, astronomy, NASA, space, telescope, Fermi, gamma-ray, magnetar, soft-gamma-ray repeater, sun, earth, starquakes, magnetic fields