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Whassup?

You must have noticed that there wasn't too much effort on this blog over the past couple of weeks (except for the elaborate and too successful April Fools hoax). I've just been so busy lately. So, here is a quick recap, and some pictures. Back on March 21, I went to Duke University to participate in a panel called Shaping the world, one job at a time: An altruistic/alternative career panel. From education, to public health in the developing world, to science journalism, writing, blogging and publishing. The room was full (80 people? Perhaps 100?!). I am not sure one hour was enough for…

Obama administration's erosion of scientific integrity

My colleague Susan F. Wood had an excellent op-ed in the Washington Post over the weekend about the Obama administration's overruling of the scientifically grounded FDA decision to approve emergency contraceptive Plan B for over-the-counter sale without age restrictions. She begins by going back in time to a much more promising moment: President Obama's signing of a Presidential Memorandum on scientific integrity: It was a proud moment, in the East Room of the White House, on a beautiful spring day in March 2009. In the room were leading scientists, Nobel laureates, the president's science…

Compact Fluorescent Lights are gonna kill you … NOT.

Steve Milloy, junk science peddler and loser, has a new crusade: he is opposed to compact fluorescent light bulbs. How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent light bulb? About US$4.28 for the bulb and labour -- unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about US$2,004.28, which doesn't include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health. Sound crazy? Yes, Steve, it does sound crazy. It doesn't help that it's coming from you, either. Can we get more details on Brandy Bridges' story? Uh-oh. It's World Net…

Eldest Children are Smarter: A Study in Effect Sizes

The story about two weeks ago that eldest children have a significantly higher IQ was really big news, but I didn't have time to talk about it then. Now, that I have had time to look at the articles about it, I think that some statement about what the word "significant" means is in order. The NYTimes reported: The eldest children in families tend to develop higher I.Q.'s than their siblings, researchers are reporting today, in a large study that could settle more than a half-century of scientific debate about the relationship between I.Q. and birth order. The average difference in I.Q. was…

The Science Behind Why Chimpanzees Are Not Pets

Guest post by Brian Hare, Evolutionary Anthropologist at Duke University Last month, a 200 pound male chimpanzee named Travis mauled a woman outside the home where he has been living with his owner Sandra Herold. Charla Nash was nearly killed by Travis and now has life changing wounds to her face while Travis was stabbed by his owner with a butcher knife and shot dead by the police. Was this incidence preventable or just a freak accident? Should chimpanzees and other primates be kept as pets? What is the effect of the primate pet trade not only on the welfare of these "pets" but on their…

Court-ordered surgery?

A 17-year-old man under suspicion for attempted murder is refusing to have a 9-mm bullet removed from his forehead. Prosecutors claim that the bullet, which is lodged just under the skin, could prove that the man was involved in a shootout with a used car-lot owner after taking part in a gang-related robbery of the lot. Prosecutors say it will prove that Bush, 17, tried to kill the owner of a used-car lot after a robbery in July. And they have obtained a search warrant to extract the slug. But Bush and his lawyer are fighting the removal, in a legal and medical oddity that raises questions…

"We Live In Little Houses Made of Beans"

I have written before of insects in the Ituri Forest. (Oh, and here too.) When it comes up that I've spent time there, certain questions often come up, and one of them is: "Did you eat bugs." Every one has seen those National Geographic specials where some natives somewhere are eating insects, and of course, Westerners who think they generally don't eat insects are fascinated with the idea. Of course, Westerners eat a lot more insects than they think. You should really consider any processed food you eat that started out as a plant crop to be part insect. If what you are eating is made…

Science and Climategate

Jon Stewart on the stolen Climategate emails: I have two responses to the release of these admittedly unflattering emails. Firstly, they shed virtually no light on the actual climate science. Tyler Cowen says it best: I see science, including climate science, as very much a decentralized process, based on the collective efforts of thousands of researchers. The evidence for our current understanding of climate change also comes from a wide variety of disciplines, including chemistry, meteorology, oceanography, geography, tree ring studies, ice sheet studies, and a good body of theory, which…

Why Has the Response to the California Drought Been so Weak?

In the past few weeks, I have had been asked the same question by reporters, friends, strangers, and even a colleague who posts regularly on this very ScienceBlogs site (the prolific and thoughtful Greg Laden): why, if the California drought is so bad, has the response been so tepid? There is no single answer to this question (and of course, it presumes (1) that the drought is bad; and (2) the response has been tepid). In many ways, the response is as complicated as California’s water system itself, with widely and wildly diverse sources of water, uses of water, prices and water rights,…

Survivorman! Interview with Aaron Rowe

Aaron Rowe writes for WIRED Science blog and we have first met at the Science Blogging Conference three weeks ago. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Who are you? I am an Eagle Scout, doctoral student in biochemistry, colossal foodie, storyteller, and amateur comedian. My recreational tastes are far from the mainstream. I don't enjoy watching sports, drinking alcohol, eating meat, amusement parks, or loud music. Most of my hobbies could be described as constructive -- cooking, writing, making videos. What I want to do more than anything is assist, educate, entertain, and protect people. The…

Medical research with 'legacy samples' raises ethical questions.

In the July 18, 2008 issue of Science, I noticed a news item, "Old Samples Trip Up Tokyo Team": A University of Tokyo team has retracted a published research paper because it apparently failed to obtain informed consent from tissue donors or approval from an institutional review board (IRB). Other papers by the same group are under investigation by the university. Observers believe problems stem in part from guidelines that don't sufficiently explain how to handle samples collected before Japan established informed consent procedures. The samples in question were "legacy samples", samples…

Best lake monster image ever: the Mansi photo

Here at Tet Zoo we've looked at lake monsters on a couple of occasions now: at alleged Nessie photos here, and at the sad death of the Lake Khaiyr monster here. For a while I've been planning to add to this list, and to write about one of the most famous, most iconic lake monster photos: the Mansi photo [detail shown in adjacent image: © Sandra Mansi]. This reasonably good colour photo is well known to everyone interested in cryptozoology, but I suppose is not so familiar to those who haven't read the cryptozoological literature. So if you're familiar with lake monster literature, nothing I'…

It's time to move on, time to get goin'

So, readers know that I went out West this past weekend to visit colleagues at the University of Colorado, spend some thinking time at the southern Colorado ranchland endowed to us by the late PharmDad, and - most prominently - visit PharmMom and PharmStiefvater on the occasion of her 70th birthday. I'm extremely grateful to my wife, PharmGirl, MD, and the illustrious PharmKid for holding down the fort and handling the emotional and practical issues of the little genius starting 3rd grade on Monday. When Mom told me she'd been following the aftermath of Pepsigate/sbfail, she asked, "So, what…

Death to the apostates! (sans repentence)

Islam Online is one of the top 1,000 sites on the net according to Alexa. Every Friday I will offer a "taste" of learned commentary from that website for your edification. Today, apostates, or irtidad. Dr. Yusuf Al-Qaradawi "is a world-renowned scholar and head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) and president of the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS)." He has been involved in the InterFaith Cultural Organization. Dr. Qaradawi says: The greatest kind of danger that faces Muslims is that which threatens their moral aspect of existence, i.e., their belief.…

Are Biotechnology and sustainability complementary? The Economist wants your vote

The Economist is running an online debate and we need your vote. Vote here. My opening statement: The number of people on Earth is expected to increase from the current 6.7 billion to 9 billion by 2050 with food demands expected to rise by 70%. How will we feed them? If we continue with current farming practices, vast amounts of wilderness will be lost, millions of birds and billions of insects will die, scarce water will be wasted, greenhouse gas emissions will increase and farm workers will be exposed to harmful chemicals. Clearly, the future of our planet requires that we improve the…

A rant about science educators

A piece online in The Scientist is an example of silly handwringing by science educators. James Williams, who describes himself as a science educator who trains science graduates to become science teachers, despairs because most trainee teachers he teaches don't have a clue about what makes science "science." He has been surveying them and reports: Over the past two years I've surveyed their understanding of key terminology and my findings reveal a serious problem. Graduates, from a range of science disciplines and from a variety of universities in Britain and around the world, have a poor…

H5N1 detection in 28 minutes?

Lots of stories on the wires (e.g., here) about a Nature Medicine paper describing a handheld microfluidic lab-on-a-chip to detect H5N1 inexpensively in less than 30 minutes. It was hard to understand what was involved from the news articles so I retrieved the paper (published online in advance of regular appearance in the journal hardcopy). It wasn't a particularly easy read, but here is what I was able to decipher. This device makes use of microfluidics technologies, essentially an emerging set of techniques for manipulating very tiny volumes of material -- tiny as in millionths to…

The Mersey monster is photographed!!!

On May 24th 2011, photographer Mark Harrison took a few photos of the large marine creature he saw off the Wirral Peninsula, near Liverpool (UK). Harrison initially thought that the animal might be a seal, but then decided to put the photos online as a sort of joke. Several newspapers then ran the photos as depicting a "sea monster" - dubbed the "Mersey monster" - that "baffles marine experts". Most of the coverage has appeared in the Liverpool Echo. So - OMG! - a new sea monster photographed!! Can we ever solve this most mysterious monster mystery??!? Well, duh. The Liverpool Echo…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

U.S. Reporters Often Do A Poor Job Of Reporting About New Medical Treatments, Analysis Finds: Most medical news stories about health interventions fail to adequately address costs, harms, benefits, the quality of evidence, and the existence of other treatment options, finds a new analysis in this week's PLoS Medicine. The analysis was conducted by Gary Schwitzer from the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Sedentary High School Girls Are At Significant Risk For Future Osteoporosis: Significant numbers of female high school athletes and non-athletes suffer from…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Synthetic Adhesive Mimics Sticking Powers Of Gecko And Mussel: Geckos are remarkable in their ability to scurry up vertical surfaces and even move along upside down. Their feet stick but only temporarily, coming off of surfaces again and again like a sticky note. But put those feet underwater, and their ability to stick is dramatically reduced. Monkeys Don't Go For Easy Pickings: Study Shows Primates Consider More Than Distance When Searching For Food: Animals' natural foraging decisions give an insight into their cognitive abilities, and primates do not automatically choose the easy option.…

Am I A Science Journalist?

OK, a busy day, mostly offline, so here's another provocation for you to trash in the comments ;-) There are several different aspects of science communication. If we classify them, somewhat artificially, by who is the sender and who is the receiver of information, we can have something like this: A) Scientists to scientists - mainly via scientific journals, also conferences, and recently via blogs and social networks. B) Scientists to traditional media - mainly via institutional press releases, now also blogs and social networks. C) Traditional media to interested ("pull" method) lay…

Cananea Miners Demand Improvements in Occupational & Environmental Health

Back in August, our New Solutions: The Drawing Board partnership with the journal New Solutions featured a post by Anne Fischel and Lin Nelson about the situation in Cananea, Mexico, where miners have been striking against the Asarco/Grupo Mexico copper operation for more than three years. The miners are demanding improvements not only to unsafe working conditions, but to the local environment. Fischel and Nelson were part of a group that visited Cananea last year through a tour arranged by the United Association of Labor Education and hosted by an organization of the Mexican Miners Union…

Public health ROI: Foodborne illness network is saving thousands of lives and millions of dollars

In another example of the value of investing in public health, a recent study finds that PulseNet, a national foodborne illness outbreak network, prevents about 276,000 illnesses every year, which translates into savings of $507 million in medical costs and lost productivity. That’s a pretty big return on investment for a system that costs just $7.3 million annually to operate. Created 20 years ago and coordinated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, PulseNet includes 83 state and federal laboratories and identifies about 1,750 disease clusters every year. It works by linking…

Eppur si muove!

The Harvard multimedia team that put together that pretty video of the Inner Life of the Cell has a whole collection of videos online (including Inner Life with a good narration.) Go watch the one titled F1-F0 ATPase; it's a beautiful example of a highly efficient molecular motor, and it's the kind of thing the creationists go ga-ga over. It's complex, and it does the same rotary motion that the bacterial flagellum does; it has a little turbine in the membrane, a stream of protons drives rotation of an axle, and the movement of that axle drives conformation changes in the surrounding protein…

What Giraffe Taught Me About Skepticism

In my recent blog entry "Skepticism and Informed Consensus", I pointed out that a real member of the skeptical movement is not universally skeptical (as may seem evident when you first think of it), but follows scientific consensus. The entry has spun off a lot of side effects: a long supportive reply by Orac, loads of comments at both our blogs, a blog entry of mine about the discredited idea that gays are nuts, and the first troll banned from commenting on Aard (not because he was one of several people who disagreed with me, but because he was being obstinately rude to myself and one of his…

Zombie organisms in the deep dark sea

Tiny microbes beneath the sea floor, distinct from life on the Earth's surface, may account for one-tenth of the Earth's living biomass, according to an interdisciplinary team of researchers, but many of these minute creatures are living on a geologic timescale. This is from a press release covering research coming out momentarily on the PNAS. Even as a subcriber, I cannot SEE today's issue of PNAS, so I cannot cover it directly, but I thought you would enjoy at least this little bit. The press release continues ... "Our first study, back in 2006, made some estimates that the cells could…

Dr Saul Schanberg: neuroscientist, physician, mentor, teacher, father, husband

Although I saw this obituary over the weekend, I didn't get to posting it until today. I was reminded by a local friend, an outstanding young scientist in her own right, of the impact that Dr Schanberg had made on so, so many lives in science, medicine, and our larger community. I only had the honor of meeting Dr Schanberg once, shortly after his cancer diagnosis, while we were at a Duke Cancer Patient Support Center fundraising dinner. His wife of over 50 years, Rachel, is founder and former director of the organization which they started following the loss of their own daughter. Among…

Dietary Practices, Depression and Anxiety

The January 2010 American Journal of Psychiatry has two articles pertaining to the relationship between dietary practices and mental health.  One article presents the results of a study; the other is an editorial. href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/ajp;167/3/305">Association of Western and Traditional Diets With Depression and Anxiety in Women Jacka et al. Am J Psychiatry 2010; 167:305-311 (published online January 4, 2010; doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2009.09060881) © 2010 American Psychiatric Association Objective: Key biological factors that influence the…

Reading the contents of working memory

Working memory refers to the process by which small amounts of information relevant to the task at hand are retained for short periods of time. For example, before cellular phones became so ubiquitous, calling someone usually involved first finding the number and then remembering it for a just few seconds by repeating it to oneself several times. Once the digits had been dialled, they are immediately forgotten. Very little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying working memory, but very recently some advances have been made. Last month, a group from the University of Texas Medical…

What does the introduction of new communications or letters publications mean?

It just hit me this morning that new communications journals are sort of less expected right now. In this post I'll briefly discuss the traditional place of letters or communications publications in scholarly communications (in science) and then weave in some thoughts about pressures on the system to change and where we're going.* First, this piece out of the standard Garvey and Griffith model of scholarly communication (also very similar to part of the UNISIST model)(drawn on Gliffy, which rocks):   Technical reports and pre-prints also might happen between regional conferences and journal…

A token review.

The Fish and Wildlife service announced on Friday that it would review ten endangered species listing decisions that were identified by regional directors as having been inappropriately influenced by former Deputy Assistant Secretary Julie MacDonald. MacDonald, as some of you may recall, was the Deputy Assistant Secretary at Interior who decided that she needed to spend more time with her family shortly after the Interior Inspector General concluded that she acted inappropriately on numerous occasions, and (very) shortly before she was scheduled to testify before a newly hostile…

How do we recognize scenes?

Take a look at this movie (you'll need a video player like QuickTime or Windows Media Player installed in your browser to see it). You'll see four different outdoor scenes flash by, one at a time. The scene itself will only be displayed for a fraction of a second, followed immediately by a distraction pattern designed to mask any image left over in your visual system. Your job is to spot any desert or mountain scene. Watch carefully! Did you spot them? What cued you in to the idea of a "desert" or a "mountain" scene? Was it a specific object in the picture (a mesa or a snowfield)? Was it a…

Clinical trial of deep brain stimulation for depression

Depression is a common neuropsychiatric disorder which affects at least 1 in 7 adults. The condition can have a major effect on patients' quality of life, and is a major cause of both disability and suicide. Many patients with depression can be treated effectively with antidepressant medications, such as the specific serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI) fluoxetine (more popularly known as Prozac). However, a significant proportion of patients - up to 20% - do not respond to these drugs, or to other forms of treatment. Now a study published online in the journal Biological Psychiatry suggests…

Aetogate, continued: Norman Silberling shoots his mouth off

Last month I blogged about the ongoing ethics case in which paleontologist Spencer Lucas and several of his colleagues were accused of claim-jumping research from a number of individuals and institutions involving ancient archosaurs called aetosaurs. Mike Taylor has been keeping track and all the developments on an exhaustively-detailed website, and some of the latest news is most disconcerting. On February 21, 2008, it became known that the Department of Cultural Affairs was holding a third inquiry into the case, an article published that very day in the Albuquerque Journal announcing the…

Preparations to Visit Manu, Peru: Vaccinations

tags: Manu, Peru, travel, birding, eco-tourism, vaccinations, Kolibri Expeditions I was contacted by Gunnar Engblom (Kolibri Expeditions), whom I've been casually acquainted with online for years, asking me if I'd like to be the "official blogger" for a birding trip to Peru. Yeow, would I?!? This unexpected offer surprised me, to say the least, but it didn't take too long for excitement to set in after I realized this was a serious offer: I would get to observe and photograph wild parrots! Unfortunately, I have recently been preoccupied with several seemingly insurmountable tasks, including…

Fight to Protect our Public Libraries from the Zombie Economy!

tags: NYC Life, NYPL, public services, public education, public libraries Today, I spoke with several people who work at and administer their local library branches in NYC about the economic situation they are faced with. Mayor Bloomberg, the eighth richest person in America, is proposing a 22% funding cut to all three New York City public library systems (NYPL, Brooklyn and Queens). These cuts would eliminate 943 employees, end all weekend service, and the materials budget will be cut by at least 30%. The City Council must approve this budget by June 30. "At the Brooklyn Public Library,…

Farm and Garden Design Class Starts Tomorrow!

Just a quick reminder that tomorrow Aaron Newton and I will begin our next Farm and Garden Design Class. The class covers everything from the very basics of design - how to get started planning for a garden or small farm, soil, sun and water issues, seed starting, choosing perennials, making the best use of space etc... to small-scale livestock keeping, making money and long term design. We've done the class a number of times, and we've had people with 100s of acres and people with tiny city lots, and people with no land at all gardening in community gardens, on public spaces or sharing…

Preserving Records of the Past, Today

An interesting article from the most recent IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Preserving Records of the Past, Today by James W. Cortada. In concerns the difficulty that scholars of the history of computing have in finding primary materials to work with, mostly in the form of documents. Scholars examining the history of information technology run into many practical, nuts-and-bolts problems more frequently than historians in other fields that have existed for considerable periods of time, such as diplomatic and political national history. Problems with the history of information…

The Association for Computing Machinery on Open Access

Via Lance Fortnow's Twitter post, it's interesting to see Communications of the ACM editor Moshe Y. Vardi on Open Access: First, a point of precision. Open-access experts distinguish between "Gold OA," described earlier, and "Green OA," which allows for open access self-archiving of material (deposit by authors) that may have been published as non-open access. ACM Copyright Policy allows for self-archiving, so ACM is a Green-OA publisher. Still, why doesn't ACM become a Gold-OA publisher? *snip* As for ACM's stand on the open-access issue, I'd describe it as "clopen," somewhere between open…

Books I'd like to read

It's been quite a long time since I did one of these posts, but as the summer reading season approaches I thought I'd highlight a few interesting items that are coming out soon. Free: The Future of a Radical Price (Amazon.ca) In his revolutionary bestseller, The Long Tail, Chris Anderson demonstrated how the online marketplace creates niche markets, allowing products and consumers to connect in a way that has never been possible before. Now, in Free, he makes the compelling case that in many instances businesses can profit more from giving things away than they can by charging for them. Far…

Nanotech: Rewards, Risks, and Responses

As weâve noted before, research on nanotechnology safety has lagged behind the use of nanomaterials in consumer products. Three recent stories describe the potential rewards and risks of nanotechnology and some of the efforts to learn more about nanomaterialsâ effects on humans and our environment. Much of the use of nanotechnology in todayâs consumer products is of questionable value to society â the tiny particles are used to make tennis rackets more lightweight, skin cream more sheer, and socks less smelly. But nanomaterials also hold great promise for making solar cells and water…

My picks from ScienceDaily

The Secret To Chimp Strength: February's brutal chimpanzee attack, during which a pet chimp inflicted devastating injuries on a Connecticut woman, was a stark reminder that chimps are much stronger than humans--as much as four-times stronger, some researchers believe. But what is it that makes our closest primate cousins so much stronger than we are? One possible explanation is that great apes simply have more powerful muscles. New Link Between The Evolution Of Complex Life Forms On Earth And Nickel And Methane Gas: The Earth's original atmosphere held very little oxygen. This began to…

Creating an Open Forum to Advance Global Health and Social Justice

At Harvard, a week ago: Recap: Wednesday's Health and Human Rights Discussion Yesterday afternoon at the Loeb Theater, Harvard hosted a forum celebrating the tenth edition of their journal Health and Human Rights. This edition is the journal's first to be presented in open-access format, meaning that anyone can read it without paying the exorbitant fees associated with most journal articles. Bostonist was in the front row as Agnes Binagwaho, Gavin Yamey, Philip Alston, and Paul Farmer (profiled as "a man who would cure the world" by Tracy Kidder) discussed the past, present, and future of…

To Educate vs. To Inform

You may be aware of the ongoing discussion about the tense relationship between scientists and science journalists. Here is the quick rundown of posts so far: Question for the academic types--interview requests The Mad Biologist and Science Journalists Science Journalists are NOT the Problem Just don't quote me Science and the Press Scientists and Journalists, Part Deux Scientists in the Media Science/journalists update redux: Mooney chimes in Science and journalism Journalists and scientists - an antimatter explosion? Madam Speaker, I Yield My Remaining Time to the Paleontologist from the…

Who's scooping whom and why this matters?

Aetosaurs. No, I have not heard of them until now. But that does not matter - the big story about them today is the possibility - not 100% demonstrated yet, to be fair - that some unethical things surround their discovery and naming. And not just Aetosaurs. Some other fossils as well. As I am not on the inside loop of the story, you need to first read the background story on Aetosaurs by Darren Naish - Part 1 and Part 2. Then, carefully read Darren's today's post and responses by Laelaps, Cryptomundo and Paleochick. For the ethical side of the story, read Janet's take. For the gory…

Cutting Academia Badly

A lot of people have asked me to link to and comment on the SUNY Albany cuts and some of the reactions to it by some online academics... To cut a long story short, the SUNY system took another round of cuts, and the President of SUNY Albany decided to cut whole programs rather than keep trimming around the edges. Classics, French, Italian, Russian, and Theatre cut by directive, at short notice and with little open consultation. Gregory Petsko wrote a high profile defence of the humanities, from a science perspective, and the Dangeral Professor hisself pitches his penny's worth in, while…

More on the future of bookstores

A great article in last Friday's Globe and Mail, Will the last bookstore please turn out the lights? The main thrust of the article is that while there's a lot of doom and gloom in the industry, there's also some hope and, more importantly, some innovation. One source of Bleumer's optimism is the "ferocious" level of reading she sees going on among young people. Those ferocious readers will be the regular book buyers of the future. What stores need to do, she insists, is not only focus on old-fashioned face-to-face customer service, but also remain flexible enough to adapt to whatever comes…

On (Not) Talking About It

tags: researchblogging.org, psychology, trauma, emotions, 9-11, psychological health To talk or not to talk, apparently that is the question, especially after a collective catastrophe, such as 9-11 or the Virginia Tech University shootings. A paper that will be published in the June issue of Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology reveals that -- contrary to current opinion -- verbally expressing one's emotions is not necessary to cope successfully with a community tragedy, and in fact, doing so might actually be harmful. Expressing one's emotions in the aftermath of a community…

Worker remain missing four days after failure of West Virginia coal slurry impoundment

[Updated 12/19/2012 below] The Charleston (WV) Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. continues to provide updates (here, here, and aerial photos) on efforts to locate a worker caught on Friday, Nov 30 in the collapse of a massive coal slurry embankment failure in Harrison County, WV.  The worker was operating a bulldozer when part of the embankment failed; he and the vehicle submerged into the pond of coal fines and chemical-laden waste water.   Two workers in pick-up trucks were also caught in the collapse, but they survived and are being treated for their injuries. The coal slurry impoundment is owned by…

Canada moves to ban asbestos. Will Trump follow the lead of our neighbors to the north?

Canada's Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan announced today that her country plans to implement a comprehensive ban on asbestos by 2018. The proposal includes: Banning the import of asbestos-containing products such as construction materials and brake pads; Expanding the on-line registry of asbestos-containing buildings; Prohibiting the use of asbestos in new construction and renovation projects; and Improving workplace health and safety rules to limit the risk of contact with asbestos. Duncan indicated that the Canadian government's action will involve several agencies. Foreshadowing that…