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Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Over 2,000 cattle died throughout eight counties in Nebraska last week as a result of an unexpected heat wave. Officials estimate that number could grow as other counties report in.

According to Tim Reimer of the United States Farm Service Agency, cattle nearing slaughter are difficult to keep cool due to their large size, and thus more vulnerable to heat. The animals are provided large quantities of water, but they sometimes stop drinking under the effects of the high temperatures.

The deaths worsened the situation for farmers, who were already struggling with high feed costs. “There were some that took some pretty substantial hits financially”, Reimer said.

Temperatures in eastern portions of the state soared into the mid 90s. The heat wave was preceded by an unusually cool spring, so the animals didn’t have a chance to acclimatise. Terry Mader, a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, reported that “Cattle, as well as other animals and humans, usually need two to four weeks to adapt to the changes in environmental conditions we observed last week. Sunny days with temperatures above the mid-80s can be stressful, particularly if there is no wind and humidity is above 50%.”

Similar heat waves occurred during the 1990s, when thousands of cattle were lost. Mader noted, “There’s no opportunity for them to get prepared […] Normally, you’ll have one to two days in a heat wave to get prepared.”

Mature cattle are generally worth US$1,000 apiece.

Thursday, December 1, 2005

U.S. President Bush re-stated his commitment to withdraw troops from Iraq and outlined goals for training Iraqi security forces that will guide such withdrawal. The presidential speech followed from a newly released White House document titled the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq. White House Press Secretary Scott McCellen claimed that the strategy outlined is what the administration has been following since 2003, and said that the released document is simply an unclassified version of the same for the public to review.

This release follows growing public and congressional dissatisfaction over the continuing violence in Iraq, rising US and Iraqi death toll, revelations of corruption and misadministration in the reconstruction program and the administration’s handling of the war. A day before the president’s address, Sen. Hillary Clinton, in an E-mail to her supporters had said “Given years of assurances that the war was nearly over and that the insurgents were in their ‘last throes,’ this administration was either not being honest with the American people or did not know what was going on in Iraq.”

“As the Iraqi forces gain experience and the political process advances, we will be able to decrease our troop levels in Iraq without losing our capability to defeat the terrorists. These decisions about troop levels will be driven by the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the good judgment of our commanders,” stated the President on Nov. 30 while speaking to Midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

As was expected, Bush did not set a timeframe for U.S. troop withdrawal, which is in direct opposition to recent calls for such a timetable by congressional leaders. The administration and its supporters label such a timeframe as “artificial”. In his speech, Bush characterized those calling for a withdrawal deadline as “sincere, but…sincerely wrong.” and said “Setting an artificial deadline to withdraw would vindicate the terrorists’ tactics of beheadings and suicide bombings and mass murder — and invite new attacks on America.”

Bush admitted that there had been “some setbacks in training Iraq’s security forces,” and that their performance is still “uneven in some areas.” Earlier, in a congressional briefing, General Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, had said that so far only one Iraqi battalion out of 120 being trained was capable of mounting operations without support from U.S. forces. The strategy document released also stated that “it’s not realistic to expect a fully functioning democracy able to defeat its enemies three years after Saddam is finally removed from power,” prompting questions about when the administration made such a determination.

In the White House press briefing Scott McClellan did not directly answer a question about which, if any of the short, medium and long term goals set out in the strategy has been achieved, saying that “I want to say we’ve made real progress on all three fronts of the strategy for victory.” Senate Majority leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn) echoed the same sentiment, saying ” … examining the results on the ground, it’s clear that we continue to make progress on the political, security and economic fronts”

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass), felt the President was ignoring what his own generals are telling him.

“The large presence of American forces on the ground feeds the insurgency,” stated Kerry.

Democratic politicians generally dismissed the speech as a repeat of old rhetoric.

Harry Reid (D-Nev), Senate minority leader, accused Bush of “recycling his tired rhetoric of ‘stay the course’.” According to Reid, Bush had “missed an opportunity to lay out a real strategy for success in Iraq that will bring our troops safely home.”

Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Programme at the New America Foundation, said Bush’s war aims failed to address the strains on U.S. armed forces imposed by Iraq. “It’s a very expansive commitment and it blows by the structural questions,” stated Clemons. He added that those problems could only be resolved by a withdrawal, changing the current rules limiting the frequency of combat tours for individual units, or by moving towards a draft. Clemons said Bush was trying to escape those problems by portraying Iraqi forces as more ready than they actually are.

Washington spends more than $6b a month to keep its forces in Iraq. More than 2,100 Americans and many more thousands of Iraqis have been killed since the March 2003 invasion.

Friday, March 24, 2006A large explosion ripped through a research building of the École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Mulhouse (ENSCMu) in Mulhouse, eastern France. Mulhouse’s mayor, Jean-Marie Bockel, confirmed that the blast killed one person and injured another. Police declared Code Red, and the neighborhood was evacuated.

According to the French Press, TF1, the victim was in his forties and had worked at the institition for about a year. A young woman was seriously injured and about a dozen people received minor injuries, with two suffering from shock. 150 firefighters were on the scene.

The ENSCMu is a technology college, with an enrollment of 8,000 and a 25-hectare campus near the town’s centre. It is known for its museum of coloring agents (Musée des Colorants), which has about 2700 samples, mainly from the second part of the nineteenth century. The museum’s database is available online in French.

The blast occurred at 11:25 GMT (12:25 local time). It is reported to have been heard two kilometres away and to have broken the windows of nearby buildings. The blast was followed by a fire that was contained by about 15:00 (local time).

The explosion’s cause is not yet clear but it is believed to have happened in a ground-floor laboratory in an annex building constructed in 1977. The lab was apparently focused on industrial safety.

Friday, March 20, 2009

New Jersey is considering a state-wide ban on Brazilian waxes, the removal of hair from the bikini area.

Although genital waxing has never really been allowed in the state, the New Jersey Board of Cosmetology and Hairstyling plans to propose a ban with more specific legal wording, in response to two women who reported being injured during a wax. The board will consider the proposal at their next meeting on April 14.

If the measure passes, New Jersey may become the only US state to ban the practice outright.

Although millions of Americans engage in bikini waxes, which generally cost between $50 and $60 per session, the practice comes with risks. Skin care experts say the hot wax can irritate delicate skin in the bikini area, and result in infections, ingrown hairs and rashes.

Waxing on the face, neck, abdomen, legs and arms would continue to be permitted in the state under the proposed ban. Although New Jersey statutes have always banned bikini waxing, the laws were unclear and seldom enforced.

As a result, many salons from around the state have offered bikini waxing for years. Many salon owners spoke out against the proposed ban, which they said would severely damage their business.

“I really don’t know if the state can stop it at this point,” said Valentia Chistova, owner of the Monmouth County salon Brazil. “I know a lot of women who are really hooked.”

Sunday, October 8, 2017

In a study scheduled for publication in the December 1 issue of Forest Ecology and Management, scientists from the University of California, Davis; USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station; and University of Washington have found a way to resolve the conflict that has sprung up between protecting forests from increasingly frequent wildfires and droughts and preserving sufficient habitat for the endangered spotted owl, Strix occidentalis. The study was performed in two national parks in California, United States.

For the past twenty-five years, spotted owl habitat preservation has focused on keeping 70% or more of the total ground area covered by natural tree canopy, a tree density that leaves forests prone to wildfires and trees more likely to die during droughts. Both wildfires and droughts have become more frequent in the years since the program began.

However, the previous studies upon which the 70% figure was based only measured overall canopy coverage. In this work, researchers used aerial LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) imaging technology to scan areas within Kings Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Park in California. The regions were analyzed by distribution of foliage, tree height, and the sizes of the spaces between trees and stands. These data were then cross-referenced with decades of field studies showing the locations of hundreds of owl nests. They found that spotted owls clustered in areas with very tall trees and stands almost exclusively, over 150 feet (48 m), avoiding areas that only had moderate or low canopy, regardless of how dense or wide.

“This could fundamentally resolve the management problem because it would allow for reducing small tree density, through fire and thinning,” said lead author Malcolm North, of UC Davis and the USDA Pacific Southwest Research Station. “We’ve been losing the large trees, particularly in these extreme wildfire and high drought-mortality events. This is a way to protect more large tree habitat, which is what the owls want, in a way that makes the forest more resilient to these increasing stressors that are becoming more intense with climate change.”

The spotted owl gained national prominence in the United States during the 1990s, when environmentalists’ efforts to preserve its habitat resulted in federal measures forbidding logging on large swaths of land, as well as federal limits on the sales of harvested wood. There was a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court case which was preceded by lawsuits on the part of timber companies and by years of large protests by timber workers and their communities who feared job losses. For a time, it seemed that the spotted owl was also threatened by competition from the faster-breeding barred owl, which had moved west into its territory.

This is not the only major study of spotted owls to reach the public eye this week. On Thursday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released the California Spotted Owl Conservation Objectives Report, which analyzes the past several decades of research on the California spotted owl and provides recommendations for ecologically and economically viable conservation.