Green Algae Virus Reduces Human Cognitive Function→

Madeline Grant, writing for Newsweek:

Simon Andrews

“ATCV-1 typically infects a species of green algae found in lakes and rivers, and has not previously been known to infect humans. However, when Yolken’s team screened a group of 92 healthy volunteers who were taking part in a study on cognitive function, the virus was found to be present in 43.5% of them.

According to the study, those infected with the virus performed around 10% worse on tests analysing visual processing speeds. In one test, infected volunteers were slower to draw a line connecting a sequence of numbers randomly distributed on a page than their uninfected counterparts.”

The study, published by the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America: “Chlorovirus ATCV-1 is part of the human oropharyngeal virome and is associated with changes in cognitive functions in humans and mice.”

When you feel the force of a Green Algae virus, careful you must be.

Procrastination on Global Warming Means Coasts Will Continue Flooding→

Simon Buckle, writing for IFLScience:

Pete Markham, CC BY-SA

“In terms of the physical science, there are perhaps three key headline messages: human influence on the climate system is clear; warming of the climate system is unequivocal; limiting the risks from climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of GHG emissions.

Mitigating our use of fossil fuels lies right at the heart of an effective response to climate change. While a 2°C target remains technically feasible, achieving it will be extremely challenging. The IPCC’s mitigation report compared hundreds of energy modelling scenarios that strongly suggest that to achieve a 2°C target, global GHG emissions would need to be around 40-70% lower than 2010 levels by 2050 and near zero by 2100.”

Fifth Assessment Report (AR5)
AR5 provides a clear and up to date view of the current state of scientific knowledge relevant to climate change. It consists of three Working Group (WG) reports and a Synthesis Report (SYR). 

Many aspects of climate change and associated impacts will continue for centuries, even if anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are stopped. The risks of abrupt or irreversible changes increase as the magnitude of the warming increases.

If into the reasons for our procrastination you go, only pain will you find. Greed, denial, and delusion. Your science, save you it will not in a world of corruption and immediate profit.

Nature Makes Better Students→

Dave Levitan, Conservation This Week:

“It shouldn’t be surprising anymore that green spaces make us happier, healthier, and just generally better, but every time a hard finding on the topic pops up it seems incredible once again. Just being near nature is enough to bump up kids’ grades—though we’ll need more data to back this up, it probably can’t hurt to head out and look at some trees any chance you and your kids can get.”

We must unlearn what we have learned. Nature makes us great, factory schools not.

Gallons per 1000 miles versus Miles per Gallon→

DataGenetics:

“In the USA, 28% of all energy consumed is used for transportation. Of this transportation energy, 93% comes from petroleum. Cars and light trucks account for 59% of US transportation use, with the average fuel consumption of cars in the USA being around 23 mpg...

A car with a higher fuel efficiency (higher mpg), will always use less fuel than one with a lower fuel efficiency; you should always go for the most fuel efficient car you can, but what I am showing is that similar linear increases in mpg efficiency make different improvements in fuel savings.

The more fuel inefficient a vehicle is, the bigger the improvement in fuel savings will be for a small improvement in efficiency. Replacing a car with a fuel efficiency of 10 mpg with one with a fuel efficiency of 11 mpg will save more fuel than replacing a car with a rate of 30 mpg with one with a rate of 41 mpg!

If your family really needs a huge full-size monster of a vehicle, exchanging it with even a slightly more efficient equivalent monster (possibly a hybrid?) could make a substantial difference to your monthly fuel costs. Conversely, changing an already highly efficient car into a hyper efficient car is not going to make a big change in your monthly fuel bills, even with a, potentially, large step up in efficiency.”

This has been a very positive test for people seeking energy savings.

Road Salt and Urban Streams→

National Science Foundation:

Paul Mayer, US EPA

“Urban landscapes are more complex than they seem, but from coast to coast may work in surprisingly similar ways, says Kaushal.

”Urban ecosystems can change relatively quickly in response to human activities,” he says. “These changes can result in rapid losses of ecosystem functions, like flood protection and pollution filtration—or can result in progress toward ecological health and productivity. The difference depends on how they are managed.”

In an overview article, Kaushal, McDowell and Wollheim point out the factors that affect the evolution of urban ecosystems. For example, the streams, lakes and land surfaces that make up cities’ watersheds show consistent patterns of change over time.

Urban waters are becoming saltier, partly due to road salt used for de-icing, and partly because the salt people eat ends up in urban streams.”

You will find what you spread on the road and lawn. A cause and effect.

Carbon Dioxide Emissions Map→

View fullsize

“An international research team led by ASU scientists has developed a new approach to estimate CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels – one that provides crucial information to policymakers. Called the “Fossil Fuel Data Assimilation System,” or FFDAS, this new system was used to quantify 15 years of CO2 emissions, every hour, for the entire planet – down to the city scale. Until now, scientists have estimated greenhouse gas emissions at coarser scales or used less reliable techniques.

“With this system, we are taking a big step toward creating a global monitoring system for greenhouse gases, something that is needed as the world considers how best to meet greenhouse gas reductions,” said Kevin Robert Gurney, lead investigator and associate professor in ASU’s School of Life Sciences. “Now we can provide all countries with detailed information about their CO2 emissions and show that independent, scientific monitoring of greenhouse gases is possible.””

Already know you that which you need.

Trout Like Mice →

Matt Miller, writing for The Nature Conservancy:

“Rainbow trout and grayling actually key in on shrews every two to three years when the mammals may be at peak abundance, much as trout will focus on mayflies or caddis flies when these insects hatch. The small mammals could provide important nutritional value to fish. In peak years, about 25 percent of rainbow trout and grayling larger than 12 inches had eaten the small mammals.

Peter Lisi, lead author of the study, was working on other fish research while completing his doctorate under Daniel Schindler at the University of Washington (Lisi is now a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison). The researchers kept finding trout and grayling with shrews in their stomachs. They wondered how often this actually occurred.”

No! Try not. Eat, or eat not. There is no try.

Pavement Science→

Bill Lindeke, writing for MinnPost:

Barr Engineering

““There are two types of pavement, concrete and asphalt, and these industries compete with each other,” explained Lev Khazanovich, an engineering professor at the University of Minnesota. “Each is always trying to improve their product, and so asphalt and concrete in Minnesota are much better than what was built 30, 40 years ago.”

The difference between the two pavements comes down to cost and lifespan. Concrete is harder and more durable, but asphalt is cheaper. In fact, considered philosophically, these two technologies might even be diametrical opposites.

“Fundamentally, asphalt is a mechanical compaction of the paving products,” Steve Lund explained to me. “It’s a physical compaction and pressing, whereas on the concrete side it’s more of a chemical reaction and hardening of the paving product.”

Concrete is composed of water, aggregate and cement (with occasional other kinds of material, such as coal ash from coal power plant filters). The chemical reaction between cement and water causes it to harden. It can thus be molded, like plastic, into a seemingly infinite variety of shapes. Asphalt, on the other hand, is a form of petroleum mixed with aggregate (mostly sand and gravel), heated up and then pressed down to form our roads, bike paths and parking lots...

“There are several different types of pervious concrete,” explained Nathan Campeau, another engineer at Barr. “It has been around for quite a while now, 10 to 12 years, and installed in several locations around the state. And there’s a corollary in porous asphalt, special mixes that have a lot of void spaces in them. They’re basically like a sponge, and allow water to go from the surface down to the sub-grade below the pavement.”

While the benefits of new pervious pavements are clear, they also present technological challenges. First, it can be tricky to install them, and they require specific equipment and time-consuming construction processes. Many contractors struggle with pervious technologies when using them for the first time.

Second, cities like Shoreview have to carefully maintain their pervious pavements, so that sediment and grit does not clog up its “void spaces.” To do this, cities and property owners have to actually vacuum the sediment out of their pervious roads and parking lots.”

Use pervious surfaces, we must. They are our city rainwater management  hope.

Experts Review State's efforts on Wild Rice and Sulfates→

Stephanie Hemphill, reporting for MinnPost:

Eli Sagor, Flickr

“For two days, the experts picked through three years’ worth of data from Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s lab and field studies, dispensing both praise and criticism for the agency.

The reason for the MPCA studies: The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, representing mining and other industries, is challenging the state’s current limit of 10 milligrams per liter of sulfate in wild rice waters. Wastewater flowing from taconite mines and wastewater treatment plants boosts the level of sulfate in some rivers and lakes far higher than the limit, especially in northeastern Minnesota, and the Legislature has charged the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency with figuring out whether the standard needs to be changed.

MPCA’s efforts included laboratory experiments and field surveys, all of which the agency presented to the independent scientists for review, a standard practice in scientific endeavors....

Shannon Lotthammer, the MPCA staffer in charge of shepherding the process, said she was pleased with the guidance from the reviewers. Agency staffers knew the analysis was not complete, but wanted to get input from the independent scientists before they got further along in the process. A recommendation on whether the standard should be changed is expected by the end of the year.”

In a dark place we find ourselves related to mining, and a little more knowledge lights our way. Difficult to see the long-term consequences of our exploitation of minerals. Always in motion is the future.

Agricultural Runoff is Polluting the Lake→

Tom Henry, reporting for The Blade:

“Jeff Reutter, the Ohio Sea Grant and Ohio State University Stone Laboratory director, frequently makes this point to groups hearing any one of the dozens of presentations he makes each year: More than two-thirds of today’s phosphorus in western Lake Erie comes from agricultural runoff. In the 1960s, more than two-thirds of it came from poor sewage treatment...

While people in Toledo may think of Lake Erie water quality as a sewage or factory issue, it is increasingly an agricultural land-use issue. The Maumee River watershed — the largest and the most important for western Lake Erie — is 73 percent agricultural land, Ms. Johnson said.

Mr. Reutter and other officials have been part of a state task force studying the phosphorus problem, which — to no one’s surprise — generally has been trending upward since 1995, when the first major bloom of toxic microcystis algae was detected in western Lake Erie since the 1970s.

One exception was during the drought of 2012. That, according to Mr. Reutter, only amplifies the strong correlation between agricultural runoff and western Lake Erie algae. In its latest report, the task force called for a 40 percent reduction in farm runoff.”

Powerful the agricultural interests have become, the dark side I sense in them.

The Health Benefit of Trees→

James Hamblin, writing for The Atlantic:

“It is becoming increasingly clear that trees help people live longer, healthier, happier lives—to the tune of $6.8 billion in averted health costs annually in the U.S., according to research published this week. And we’re only beginning to understand the nature and magnitude of their tree-benevolence.

In the current journal Environmental Pollution, forester Dave Nowak and colleagues found that trees prevented 850 human deaths and 670,000 cases of acute respiratory symptoms in 2010 alone. That was related to 17 tonnes of air pollution removed by trees and forests, which physically intercept particulate matter and absorb gasses through their leaves.

In terms of impacts on human health, trees in urban areas are substantially more important than rural trees due to their proximity to people,” the researchers wrote. “The greatest monetary values are derived in areas with the greatest population density.””

Mr. Moment - Flicker

 For our own health we need more wildness in the urban areas. You will know when you are calm, at peace.

Straits of Mackinac Oil Pipeline Failure Would be Disastrous→

Keith Matheny, reporting for Detroit Free Press: 

ThiloG: Flickr.com

“A rupture of 61-year-old, underwater oil pipelines running through the Straits of Mackinac would be “the worst possible place” for a spill on the Great Lakes, with catastrophic results, according to a University of Michigan researcher studying potential impacts of a spill.

David Schwab, a research scientist at the U-M Water Center, retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where he studied Great Lakes water flows and dynamics for more than 30 years. He’s the author of a new study done in collaboration with the National Wildlife Federation looking at different scenarios for potential oil spills in the Straits from Canadian oil transport giant Enbridge’s Line 5.

“I can’t think — in my experience — of another place on the Great Lakes where an oil spill would have as wide an area of impact, in as short of time, as at the Straits of Mackinac,” Schwab said.

Line 5 is a set of two oil pipelines that runs from Superior, Wis., through the Upper Peninsula, underwater through the Straits and then down through the Lower Peninsula before connecting to a hub in Sarnia, Ontario. The lines transport about 23 million gallons of oil and other petroleum products, such as natural gas liquids, through the Straits daily.”

Pain, suffering, death I feel would happen. Something terrible may happen. Terrible pain for this Black Swan.

Zebra & Quagga Mussels are Change Agents in Lake Erie→

“Creatures living on, near, or below the bottom of the lake—is “fundamentally changed from its past,” according to a paper published online in the current journal of the Journal of Great Lakes Research. Lyubov Burlakova, who works with the Great Lakes Center at SUNY Buffalo State, is the first author. The coauthors are Alexander Y. Karatayev, director of the center; Christopher Pennuto, a research associate with the center and biology professor at Buffalo State; and Christine Mayer, associate professor of ecology at the University of Toledo.

“The story of Lake Erie shows how profoundly human activity can affect an ecosystem,” said Burlakova. She traces that activity as far back as the early 1800s, when people cut down forests and built sawmills and dams.”

SUNY Buffalo State

This one a long time have I watched. All it's history many have looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never our mind on what is best for the lake. Hmm? What are we doing?

Lake of the Woods Algal Blooms are Worsening→

Ron Meador, reporting for MinnPost:

Lee Grim

“Key points from the International Joint Commission’s second “State of the Basin” report, released on Tuesday:

- Massive blooms of blue-green algae are on the rise in Lake of the Woods, despite reductions in flows of phosphorus into upstream lakes and streams from industrial polluters; some of this seems to be driven by phosphorus releases from lake sediments, and some by climate change.
- Rivers in the basin are showing improved water quality, primarily because of controls on paper mills and other industrial sources.
- Walleye, lake trout and sturgeon populations have been recovering as a result of special management efforts, and certain bird populations have returned to healthy levels thanks to reduced pesticide use.
- Mercury levels in fish remain high in many lakes, such that anglers are advised to check the status of public-health advisories before eating any fish caught anywhere in the basin.”

IJC State of the Basin Report

We always find what we dumped in.

Forests are Good for Fish→

Jason G. Goldman, writing for Conservation:

“Fish rely on forests for their very survival. That’s because, in a way, they eat them. Debris from forests finds their way into rivers, lakes, and streams. The bacteria in the water break down the leaves and bits of tree bark and dead animals. Then the zooplankton eat those bacteria, and the fish eat the zooplankton.”

Matt Tillett

One can eat only what is brought in.

Mimicking Nature: Fish Passage Around Dams→

Rebecca Kessler, writing for Yale Environment 360:

“In North America, a few nature-like fishways were completed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the approach has gradually gained popularity since, particularly in New England, the Pacific Northwest, Minnesota, and parts of Canada. Nature-like fishways — which also go by names like “roughened channels” and “stream-like fishways” — are catching on elsewhere, too, including Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. ”

Sarrancolin Dam on France's Neste River (Photo credit: FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Department)

Size matters. Look at this, Judge the fish passage by hydrology, do you? 

Acid Rain's Dirty Legacy→

Brooks Miner, reporting for FiveThirtyEight:

“Acid rain was rare among environmental problems in that it had a viable solution, and these days it’s often hailed as an environmental success story. The market worked as intended, sulfur and nitrogen emissions declined and rain became less acidic. And just two weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision upholding the federal government’s authority to regulate power plants in this manner.

But what about the lakes and streams that were already so acidic? Nearly 25 years since those changes to the Clean Air Act, water bodies in the Northeast have recovered, while those further south have not.”

Flickr - Rainforest Action Network

Decrease the burden on lakes affected by past emissions, lower pollution in the present would. 

Trends in Water Transparency for Midwest Lakes

Grace Hong

From National Science Foundation Discoveries:

“Scientists engaged in a study of long-term water quality trends in Midwestern lakes found some good news: little change in water clarity in more than 3,000 lakes. Look deeper, and the research becomes something more: a chronicle of a new source of data for scientists, data from residents of towns and villages surrounding the lakes.

The results are published this week in a paper in the journal PLOS ONE. The paper co-authors analyzed almost a quarter of a million observations taken over seven decades on 3,251 lakes in eight Midwestern states.”

— http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=131238&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click

Adam Hinterthuer, writing for University of Wisconsin - Madison:

“What the authors found was that, on an individual scale, some lakes were getting clearer while others were not. However, says Lottig, combining all that data together indicates that there is a slightly increasing trend in water clarity at a regional scale. “Unfortunately,” he says, “the data don’t exist to explain those patterns.” Lottig hopes efforts like the “Cross-Scale Interaction” or “CSI Limnology” project, an international team of scientists that he’s a part of, can collect global data on things like water chemistry and aquatic biology that will add context to the data generated by citizens.

Though the citizen scientist dataset limited his team’s ability to explain the patterns they observed, Lottig says it suggests that such information can play a role in shaping future research — a possibility that has some scientific organizations taking notice.”

— http://www.news.wisc.edu/22805

Remember, science's strength flows from the sample size. But beware. Controls, randomization, replication, and statistical inference. The light side are they. Once you start down this path, forever will it dominate your destiny. 

Graphene Not All Good→

Sean Nealon, writing for University of California - Riverside:

“In a first-of-its-kind study of how a material some think could transform the electronics industry moves in water, researchers at the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering found graphene oxide nanoparticles are very mobile in lakes or streams and therefore likely to cause negative environmental impacts if released...

As production of these nanomaterials increase, it is important for regulators, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, to understand their potential environmental impacts, said Jacob D. Lanphere, a UC Riverside graduate student who co-authored a just-published paper about graphene oxide nanoparticles transport in ground and surface water environments.
“The situation today is similar to where we were with chemicals and pharmaceuticals 30 years ago,” Lanphere said. “We just don’t know much about what happens when these engineered nanomaterials get into the ground or water. So we have to be proactive so we have the data available to promote sustainable applications of this technology in the future.””

Do not assume anything. Clear your mind must be, if you are to discover the real issues behind this product. 

Synthetic Biology: Who Gains?→

Richard C. Lewontin, writing for the New York Book of Reviews:

“Nothing in history suggests that those who control and profit from material production can really be depended upon to devote the needed foresight, creativity, and energy to protect us from the possible negative effects of synthetic biology. In cases where there is a conflict between the immediate and the long-range consequences or between public and private good, how can that conflict be resolved? Can the state be counted on to intervene when a private motivation conflicts with public benefit, and who will intervene when the state itself threatens the safety and general welfare of its citizens?”

Harry Campbell

Reckless they are. Matters are worse. If no mistake have we've made, yet losing we are … a different game we should play. Stopped they must be; on intelligent action all depends.