Eideard

CO₂ capture facility sprawls alongside cooling tower at Mountaineer plant

Poking out of the ground near the smokestacks of the Mountaineer power plant here are two wells that look much like those that draw natural gas to the surface. But these are about to do something new: inject a power plant’s carbon dioxide into the earth.

A behemoth built in 1980, long before global warming stirred broad concern, Mountaineer is poised to become the world’s first coal-fired power plant to capture and bury some of the carbon dioxide it churns out. The hope is that the gas will stay deep underground for millennia rather than entering the atmosphere as a heat-trapping pollutant.

The experiment, which the company says could begin in the next few days, is riveting the world’s coal-fired electricity sector, which is under growing pressure to develop technology to capture and store carbon dioxide. Visitors from as far as China and India, which are struggling with their own coal-related pollution, have been trooping through the plant.

The United States still depends on coal-fired plants, many of them built decades ago, to meet half of its electricity needs. Some industry experts argue that retrofitting them could prove far more feasible than building brand new, cleaner ones.

Yet the economic viability of the Mountaineer plant’s new technology, known as carbon capture and sequestration, remains uncertain…

And as with any new technology, even the engineers are unsure how well it will work: will all of the carbon dioxide stay put?

Should be interesting as all get-out. Of course, regardless of results, diehard coal investors will claim it worked. The Earth-religion segment of environmentalist activists will claim it didn’t.

I’m waiting for solid data, analysis that is peer-reviewed – preferably by universities without subsidies from coal companies.

The ban on smoking in public places, such as bars and restaurants, has been one of the greatest public health debates of the early 21st century. Now, two large studies suggest that communities that pass laws to curb secondhand smoke get a big payoff — a drop in heart attacks.

Overall, American, Canadian, and European cities that have implemented smoking bans had an average of 17 percent fewer heart attacks in the first year, compared with communities who had not taken such measures.

Then, each year after implementing smoking bans (at least for the first three years, the longest period studied), smoke-free communities have an average 26 percent decline in heart attacks, compared with those areas that still allow smokers to light up in public places…

How harmful is secondhand smoke? Nonsmokers have a 25 percent to 30 percent higher risk of heart attack if they inhale smoke at home or at work, and smoke has been shown to affect heart health within minutes, says Dr. David Meyers.

“We can measure chemical changes within 20 minutes,” he says. “The changes that occur primarily involve the clotting system. Basically, exposure to smoke makes your blood sticky and real clot-y and that’s what causes heart attacks.”

While this health effect is well established, it has not been clear if banning smoking could help reduce heart attacks, he says.

“We know that if you expose somebody, it’s bad,” says Meyers. “How about if you ban the exposure — will that make any difference? So that end of the logic had to be looked at, and now we can say, absolutely.”

RTFA. Anyone who still needs convincing – well, I worry about their ability to perceive the realities around them.

All it took was looking around and realizing that people who smoked had more illnesses of every kind.

Senate Republicans have moved to prevent the FCC’s proposed rules on net neutrality with an amendment to the Interior Appropriations bill that would tie up funding at the agency for new regulatory mandates. Observers said, however, that the move was unlikely to be approved in the Democrat-majority Congress.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), ranking member of Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, said in a release:

“We must tread lightly when it comes to new regulations. Where there have been a handful of questionable actions in the past on the part of a few companies, the Commission and the marketplace have responded swiftly,” Hutchison said in the release.

“The case has simply not been made for what amounts to a significant regulatory intervention into a vibrant marketplace. These new regulatory mandates and restrictions could stifle investment incentives,” she said.

This is one of those old-fashioned Republican deceits. Not the Bush-Cheney-Perry neocon flavor. A little less sophistry.

Perish the thought someone might prefer freedom of choice, freedom of access and communication – over investment incentives!

UPDATE: In today’s modern up-to-date Senate, the 6 senators offering the amendment to an appropriations bill that will prohibit the FCC from developing and implementing new regulations:

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas ), Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.).

Time lapse video ascent to 93,000 feet and back

Oliver Yeh is the kind of guy who cooks up ideas so kooky, so out-of-this-world, that even his fellow MIT students tend to roll their eyes when they hear them.

But that never stops him.

His latest concept — to launch a camera into near-space using a weather balloon, a cell phone, hand warmers and a drink cooler — fell flat when he sent out an e-mail message to dozens of his classmates, asking for help.

Unfazed, Yeh managed to find one friend willing to chip in. And on September 2, the go-it-alone pair floated a balloon-camera high enough into the atmosphere to photograph the curvature of the Earth and the deep black of space, all on a lunch-money budget of $148…

After Yeh’s fellow student and sidekick, Justin Lee, uploaded the story to CNN’s iReport.com, their camera-to-space effort, which they named Project Icarus, went viral online.

Since then, the duo has received a number of requests from other would-be space photographers, asking for their project notes. Yeh said he will post those soon on the project’s Web site at 1337arts.com.

RTFA. Inspiring to read about students with dreams greater than Rock Band and air guitar lust.

Researchers have discovered an unusual kind of meteorite in the Western Australian desert and have uncovered where in the Solar System it came from, in a very rare finding published today in the journal Science.

Meteorites are the only surviving physical record of the formation of our Solar System and by analysing them researchers can glean valuable information about the conditions that existed when the early Solar System was being formed. However, information about where individual meteorites originated, and how they were moving around the Solar System prior to falling to Earth, is available for only a dozen of around 1100 documented meteorite falls over the past two hundred years.

Dr Phil Bland, the lead author of today’s study from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, said: “We are incredibly excited about our new finding. Meteorites are the most analysed rocks on Earth but it’s really rare for us to be able to tell where they came from. Trying to interpret what happened in the early Solar System without knowing where meteorites are from is like trying to interpret the geology of Britain from random rocks dumped in your back yard.”

The new meteorite, which is about the size of cricket ball, is the first to be retrieved since researchers…set up a trial network of cameras in the Nullarbor Desert in Western Australia in 2006.

The researchers aim to use these cameras to find new meteorites, and work out where in the Solar System they came from, by tracking the fireballs that they form in the sky. The new meteorite was found on the first day of searching using the new network, by the first search expedition, within 100m of the predicted site of the fall. This is the first time a meteorite fall has been predicted using only the data from dedicated instruments.

RTFA for the details. Not only about the process of determining the origin of the meteorite – but how they utilized this new camera network. Interesting tale.

Walter Brown catching the bus

Walter Brown never wanted to live in a nursing home, but when he had a stroke two years ago, he saw little choice. Mr. Brown, 72, could not walk, use his left arm or transfer himself into his wheelchair.

“It was like being in jail,” Mr. Brown said on a recent afternoon. “In the nursing home you’ve got to do what they say when they say it, go to bed when they tell you, eat what they want you to eat. The food was terrible.”

But recently state workers helped Mr. Brown find a two-bedroom apartment in public housing here, which he shares with his daughter. “It just makes me more relaxed, more confident in myself,” he said, speaking with some difficulty, but with a broad smile. “More confident in the future.”

A growing number of states are reaching out to people like Mr. Brown, who have been in nursing homes for more than six months, aiming to disprove the notion that once people have settled into a nursing home, they will be there forever. Since 2007, Medicaid has teamed up with 29 states to finance such programs, enabling the low-income elderly and people with disabilities to receive many services in their own homes.

The program in Pennsylvania provides up to $4,000 in moving expenses, including a furniture allowance and modifications to the apartment, and Mr. Brown has a home health aide every morning and a care manager to arrange for services like physical therapy. The new programs, financed largely by $1.75 billion from Medicaid, are a sharp departure from past practices, where Medicaid practically steered people into nursing homes…

For Mr. Brown, the transition to his own home has changed his life, he said. Now, with his motorized wheelchair, he travels the city on public buses, visiting friends in other neighborhoods…

States and the federal government hope to save money, though research about cost savings has so far been inconclusive. A recent study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, found that home care costs taxpayers $44,000 a year less than a nursing home stay — though this number cannot be used to estimate total savings, because often home-based services replace family care, not nursing home care.

RTFA. Time for the Feds to kick in broader standards, flexible programs based on states’ successes. You know damned well the Blue States won’t do squat.

Costs less and is more humane? You know who would try to put a stop to it.

In a small “proof of principle” study, stroke researchers at Johns Hopkins and the University of Illinois have found that a simple, one-minute eye movement exam performed at the bedside worked better than an MRI to distinguish new strokes from other less serious disorders in patients complaining of dizziness, nausea and spinning sensations…

The project, spearheaded by a Johns Hopkins neurologist in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Illinois in Peoria, found that the quick, extremely low-cost exam caught more strokes than the current gold standard of MRI, suggesting that if further research on broader populations confirms these results, physicians may have a way to improve care and avoid the high costs of MRI in some cases…

Dizziness is a common medical problem, Newman-Toker says, responsible for 2.6 million emergency room visits annually in the United States. While the vast majority of dizziness complaints are caused by benign inner-ear balance problems, about 4 percent are signals of stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA, a condition that often warns of impending stroke in the coming days or weeks). Because more than half of patients with dizziness who are experiencing strokes show none of the classic stroke symptoms — one-sided weakness, numbness, or speech problems — emergency room physicians are estimated to misdiagnose at least a third of them, losing the chance for quick and effective treatment…

Though the researchers emphasize the need to verify their results in a larger and more general population of patients with dizziness, Newman-Toker says the initial findings are “incredibly promising.”

Sounds good to me.

Though my elder kin who lived their lives in healthier environs than I have [which means they stayed in rural Canada] live decades longer on average than my relatives in the lower 48, strokes are what seem to catch up with them as they push 90 or 100 years old.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

The top military commander in Afghanistan warns in a confidential assessment of the war there that he needs additional troops within the next year or else the conflict “will likely result in failure.”

The grim assessment is contained in a 66-page report that the commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, submitted to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Aug. 30, and which is now under review by President Obama and his top national security advisers…

In his five-page commander’s summary, General McChrystal ends on a cautiously optimistic note: “While the situation is serious, success is still achievable.”

But throughout the document (.pdf), General McChrystal warns that unless he is provided more forces and a robust counterinsurgency strategy, the war in Afghanistan is most likely lost…

Mr. Obama and his advisers have said they need time to absorb the assessment of the Afghanistan security situation that General McChrystal submitted three weeks ago — a separate report from the general’s expected request for forces — as well as the uncertainties created by the fraud-tainted Afghan elections…

General McChrystal has publicly stated many of the conclusions in his report: emphasizing the importance of protecting civilians over just engaging insurgents, restricting airstrikes to reduce civilian casualties, and sharply expanding the Afghan security forces and accelerating their training…

When you walk in through the door of foreign intervention after 8 years of incompetence and arrogance, 8 years of Republican lies and deceit – you’re not surprised to find a disaster made worse by dollars wasted on a biblical scale.

If you have a conscience, if you care to try to repair the sleazy work done by the Bush-Cheney cohort, then gird your loins for another couple years of war mixed with civil investment that the Pentagon has known how to achieve all along – but, was not allowed to do. As crass as it sounds, even this second half-assed solution leaves the White House in a position to claim “victory” before the 2004 elections – with more of our troops back on American soil than there has been since Bush was elected.

What would they do about a Black cop with blonde cornrows?

To get booted off the street, a police officer has to do something pretty serious – like shoot a suspect or be accused of brutality.

But in the 35th District, which covers Logan, Olney and adjacent neighborhoods in Philadelphia, apparently a hairdo will do it.

A cop who got cornrows was ordered off the street and kept on desk duty for two days until he cut his braids off, sources said.

While dozens of black officers across the city wear cornrows, Officer Thomas Strain is white…

“It’s absolutely discriminatory,” said one officer. Strain’s cornrows ‘do “was neat. It was above his collar. It’s not like he shaved a Nazi sign or something anti-black or anti-Hispanic on his head. It’s just cornrows. I don’t know what the problem is.”

The problem, police spokesman Lt. Frank Vanore said, is that Strain’s superior didn’t feel his cornrows were “professional…”

Vanore didn’t see Strain’s cornrows, but speculated that they may have kept his hat from fitting his head in the required military manner. He couldn’t explain why black officers with cornrows weren’t ordered to get haircuts – unless they’re women, because the hair policy for female officers is slightly more permissive.

Since the police department never did say the dude’s hat didn’t fit – or otherwise define what the heck was “unprofessional” – I call bogus on the whole incident. Just some stuffy boss who can’t deal with a white dude adopting a Black hairstyle.

Thanks, Mr. Fusion

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Japan’s new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, faces his first diplomatic test this week when he meets President Barack Obama in New York as the two allies grapple with disagreements that investors fear could damage ties.

The only investors I can think of the meeting might upset are those heavily into war toys.

Hatoyama will also seek a high profile for Japan at a U.N. climate change conference by pledging ambitious targets for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and offering more environmental help to developing nations.

Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which trounced its long-dominant conservative rival in an August election, has vowed to forge a more equal partnership with Washington, setting goals such as revising deals on U.S. forces based in Japan…

Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said last week he wanted to resolve a row over how to ease the burden of U.S. military bases on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa within the first 100 days of the new administration.

“Ease the burden”? What a polite way to say “time to shove off, sailor”.

It is disagreements such as those that concern investors. A Reuters survey of 33 financial market traders and analysts last month showed a third saw strained ties with Washington as one of the key risks for Japan.

I love analysts who believe Asia still revolves around a United States fixed in the time of the Korean War. There really are good reasons why companies like Toyota have major commercial centers in Germany and China. It ain’t just the food. These are centers of economic growth that have been surpassing the guesses of “analysts” for a spell.

As the only nation to have suffered nuclear attacks, Hatoyama has said it is Japan’s “moral mission” to strive for a nuclear-free world. At the same time, Japan relies on the U.S. arsenal to protect it from regional threats such as unpredictable neighbor North Korea..

That last sentence must be leftover from a speechwriter for Chiang Kai-Shek around, say, 1954. And just as out of touch with the real world.

The questions are real. And there are many more. Most stem from protocols designed in the era of McArthur and our occupation forces. The Japanese are overdue at shrugging off conforming to rules delivered from the White House.