Clipmarks | jetcloud's clips

Stop the arrests of Journalists

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 03:20:23 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud
clipper's remarks: Sign the letter.

Clip Source: digg.com

Stop the Arrests of Journalists. Sign the Letter.

secure.freepress.net — Police in St. Paul arrested several journalists yesterday, including Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and an AP photographer as they were covering protests of the Republican National Convention. And earlier this weekend, police raided a meeting of the video journalists' group I-Witness.

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Tags: journalists, arrested, st. paul police

America: Freedom to Fascism

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 15:37:52 GMT

clipped by: sahara
clipper's remarks: Long video, but worthy of a watch! It is very controversial, and has been demanded to be removed from several sites.

Clip Source: video.google.com

[Video]

Tags: freedom, taxes, america

The Humungous Fungus

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:50:01 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes
clipper's remarks: See wikipedia:

Largest Organism

Armillaria ostoyae
(Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Armillaria_ostoyae.jpg)

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

Fungus is world's largest living organism

The fungus Armillaria ostoyae, commonly known at root rot, has become the world's largest living organism thanks to an outbreak in Prairie City, Ore.

Currently the fungus form dubbed the "humungous fungus" by the U.S. Forest Service underlies 2,200 miles of land outside the Oregon city and wildlife officials are at a loss how to stop its growth

With some estimates placing the fungus' age at 8,000 years old, the natural organism has had plenty of time to spread throughout the region as other life forms unknowingly moved above.

To that end, the fungus now spreads across an area equal to 1,600 football fields and is only noticeable in areas where it has claimed trees.

Tags: fungus, biology, organism, large, life, nature

Cannabis-based spray painkiller approved for cancer patients

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 07:32:39 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud

Clip Source: www.theglobeandmail.com

Health Canada has approved a new cannabis-based painkiller to help alleviate the suffering of cancer patients.

In 2005, Canada became the first country in the world to approve the sale of a prescription painkiller derived from cannabis. Sativex was initially allowed on the market for the treatment of severe pain associated with multiple sclerosis.

It belongs to a class of drugs known as cannabinoids. A report issued yesterday said the sale of cannabinoids has soared by 45 per cent worldwide in the past year, to $709-million (U.S.)

Scientists are excited by the prospect of this class of drugs because there are about 10 times as many cannabinoid receptors in the brain as opioid receptors, meaning the drugs should be more effective at blocking pain.

Cannabis-based drugs also appear to have fewer side effects than those derived from opium.

codeine and morphine,

cause severe constipation and drowsiness.

physicians also hesitate to prescribe opioids because they are highly addictive.

Tags: cannabis

IN REMEMBRANCE…

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 05:25:48 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud
clipper's remarks: I too, remember. And that one lone contrail - that one lone cloud over America. Up here in Canada, spaghetti jetclouds.

NoCloud:
http://www.pediascribe.com/sun.jpg

Cloud:
http://www.pediascribe.com/umbrella.jpg

Clip Source: www.pediascribe.com

I remember when I was a kid, my mom was able to recall exactly what she was doing when she heard that JFK had been shot.

And then 9/11 happened. And years have passed. And I can tell you exactly what I was doing when I heard the news.

After

It was late afternoon/early evening at that point. Still not a cloud in the sky. It was very eerie though because there also was not a contrail to be seen. Usually the skies are criss-crossed by them.

Then we saw it. The one lone contrail coming from the west and heading to the east.

To this day we maintain that it was Air Force One carrying President Bush back to the White House. It was about the right time, according to news reports, for it to have been the President’s plane.

And that, my friends, is how I came to understand how my mom could remember minute details about one day in her life. I understand now because I can do the same thing. As much as I want to forget those images burned into my brain, I also never want to forget.

Tags: climate, climate change, contrails, jetclouds, sun, cloud, rain

Major biological discovery…inside the Chernobyl reactor

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 03:02:42 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud
clipper's remarks: "That is to say, the melanin molecule gets struck by a gamma ray and its chemistry is altered. This is an amazing discovery, no one had even suspected that something like this was possible. Aside from its novelty value, this discovery leads to some interesting speculation and potential research. Humans have melanin molecules in their skin cells, does this mean that humans are getting some of their energy from radiation? This also implies there could be organisms living in space where ionizing radiation is plentiful."

Clip Source: unitedcats.wordpress.com

The abandoned town of Pripyat, the Chernobyl reactor in the background.

There has been an exciting new biological discovery inside the tomb of the Chernobyl reactor. Like out of some B-grade sci fi movie, a robot sent into the reactor discovered a thick coat of black slime growing on the walls. Since it is highly radioactive in there, scientists didn’t expect to find anything living, let alone thriving. The robot was instructed to obtain samples of the slime, which it did, and upon examination…the slime was even more amazing than was thought at first glance.

This slime, a collection of several fungi actually, was more than just surviving in a radioactive environment, it was actually using gamma radiation as a food source.

Samples of these fungi grew significantly faster when exposed to gamma radiation at 500 times the normal background radiation level.

The fungi appear to use melanin, a chemical found in human skin as well, in the same fashion as plants use chlorophyll.

Tags: radiation

Ice Road Truckers

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 07:53:43 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud
clipper's remarks: The Big Chill

Clip Source: www.thehistorychannel.co.uk

The History Channel embarks upon an unparalleled adventure revealing the virtually unknown occupation of ice road trucking - one of the world's most dangerous jobs. These death defying drivers haul their vast rigs over nothing but frozen ice, risking their lives to deliver their cargo.

Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:54:47 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud
clipper's remarks: 'The latest images, taken by Envisat's radar, say fractures have now opened up in this bridge and adjacent areas of the plate are disintegrating, creating large icebergs.
The Antarctic peninsula -- the tongue of land that juts northward from the white continent towards South America -- has had one of the highest rates of warming anywhere in the world in recent decades.

But this latest stage of the breakup occurred during the Southern Hemisphere's winter, when atmospheric temperatures are at their lowest.

One idea is that warmer water from the Southern Ocean is reaching the underside of the ice shelf and thinning it rapidly from underneath.

"Wilkins Ice Shelf is the most recent in a long, and growing, list of ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula that are responding to the rapid warming that has occurred in this area over the last fifty years," researcher David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said.

"Current events are showing that we were being too conservati

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming

Images taken by its Envisat remote-sensing satellite show that Wilkins Ice Shelf is "hanging by its last thread" to Charcot Island, one of the plate's key anchors to the Antarctic peninsula, ESA said in a press release.

"Since the connection to the island... helps stabilise the ice shelf, it is likely the breakup of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf at risk," it said.

Wilkins Ice Shelf had been stable for most of the last century, covering around 16,000 square kilometres (6,000 square miles), or about the size of Northern Ireland, before it began to retreat in the 1990s.

Since then several large areas have broken away, and two big breakoffs this year left only a narrow ice bridge about 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles) wide to connect the shelf to Charcot and nearby Latady Island.

Scientists are puzzled and concerned by the event, ESA added.

Tags: antarctica, ice shelf, breaking up, winter!, omg

Cree remove blockade - drivers blast through

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 05:47:30 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud
clipper's remarks: The blockade was to remain until Monday to mark National Aboriginal Day, as other aboriginals marked the day with marches and celebrations, but was taken down on Saturday.

The band had notified oil and gas companies operating in the area of its intentions, and many of them agreed to stay off the road until the blockade ended, Anderson said.

Most oil workers had been extremely understanding, he said. Residents and other drivers had been allowed to pass through. "

Clip Source: www.cbc.ca

The Kelly Lake Cree Nation took down a highway blockade near the Alberta-B.C. border Saturday because of a close call with angry and dangerous drivers, band spokesman Clayton Anderson said.

Anderson said he was walking toward a vehicle at the blockade on Highway 52, about 180 kilometres southeast of Chetwynd, in northeastern B.C., when "this guy just steps on the gas and practically runs me over."

He was nicked, Anderson said, and then "these two big rigs and a pickup sped through here and literally just about running over my people."

The protesters were stopping oil and gas service trucks to express concerns about the volume of exploration work in the area, Anderson said Friday.

"We've talked about it to death and something's got to be done about it," he said, such as upgrading the narrow road or building a bypass around the community.

External Links

Kelly Lake Cree Nation

Tags: kelly lake cree nation, blockade alberta-b.c. border, canada

Protect Our Food

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:48:38 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud
clipper's remarks: "These "pharma crops" have been grown outdoors in 35 states. They threaten to mix with food crops and contaminate our food supply, with serious implications for public health, farmers, and food producers."

Clip Source: www.ucsusa.org

Biotechnology has given us a wide range of new drugs. Using genetically engineered microbes, fungi, and animal cells grown in huge vats, the biopharmaceutical industry has brought more than 250 new medicines to market.

Some companies have experimented with a different approach-engineering food crops such as corn, rice, and safflower to produce drug compounds. These "pharma crops" have been grown outdoors in 35 states. They threaten to mix with food crops and contaminate our food supply, with serious implications for public health, farmers, and food producers. The Union of Concerned Scientists has urged the U.S. Department of Agriculture to protect our food by banning outdoor drug-producing food crops.

(click here for full size slideshow)

Tags: biotechnology, genetically engineered microbes, fungi, and animal cells, contaminate food supply

An Exploding Asteroid

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 04:55:23 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud

Clip Source: www.astrobio.net

A new study shows that a comet or asteroid may have exploded over Canada and caused the Earth's climate to change at the end of the last Ice Age some 12,900 years ago.

During the period known as the Younger Dryas, large mammals like wooly mammoths became extinct.
Credit: USGS

Many scientists hypothesize that mass extinctions our planet’s history may well have been due to comet and asteroid impacts.
Credit: NASA ARC

Samples of diamonds, gold and silver that have been found in the region have been conclusively sourced through X-ray diffractometry in the lab of UC Professor of Geology Warren Huff back to the diamond fields region of Canada.

The only plausible scenario available now for explaining their presence this far south is the kind of cataclysmic explosive event described by West’s theory. "We believe this is the strongest evidence yet indicating a comet impact in that time period," says Tankersley.

Glacier Bay Park's Gravity Shifts As Ice Melts

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:48:35 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud

Clip Source: www.npr.org

When it comes to the upward movement of the Earth's crust, the residents of tiny Gustavus, Alaska, are experts.

"Isostatic rebound is the term for it," explains Morgan DeBoer, taking a break from his sawmill. "You know, land rebounding, coming up, springing up out of the water at an inch and a half a year."

DeBoer has good reason to be up on the jargon. Over the past decades, isostatic rebound has more than doubled the size of his family's seafront property, as the rising Earth's crust lifts new real estate out of the water.

The family even went to court — the case went all the way up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals — to defend their right to the new land.

"You wouldn't think it would be much," says DeBoer, "but when it's flat land to begin with, any change is significant. We gain probably an acre or so every year." With all this new acreage, the DeBoers have built themselves a nine-hole golf course.

Where Ice Disappears, Earth Rises

Slideshow: Living on Glacier Bay

Martin Kaste/NPR

Tags: isostatic rebound, gustavus, alaska

Arctic seabed afire with lava-spewing volcanoes

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:32:08 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud

Clip Source: www.canada.com

The Arctic seabed is as explosive geologically as it is politically judging by the "fountains" of gas and molten lava that have been blasting out of underwater volcanoes near the North Pole.

"Explosive volatile discharge has clearly been a widespread, and ongoing, process," according to an international team that sent unmanned probes to the strange fiery world beneath the Arctic ice.

They returned with images and data showing that red-hot magma has been rising from deep inside the earth and blown the tops off dozens of submarine volcanoes, four kilometres below the ice. "Jets or fountains of material were probably blasted one, maybe even two, kilometres up into the water," says geophysicist Robert Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who led the expedition.

The team explored the volcanoes last summer as the Russians were planting a flag on the nearby sea floor triggering an international flap over ownership of the seabed.

Tags: arctic, volcanoes

drunk driver jailed 20 years

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 07:57:36 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud
clipper's remarks: "The collision occurred on Jan. 20, 2006, the day Yellowknee had just been released from jail. He had been drinking all day and, by 5 p.m., he was staggering around the Sawridge Truck Stop in Slave Lake, a bottle of Silk Tassel Rye tucked into his jacket, trying to hitch a ride up to Wabasca.

Slave Lake is about 250 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

Minutes later, he was behind the wheel of a stolen white pickup truck, speeding out of Slave Lake on the highway with the police in pursuit, lights on, sirens blaring. He fishtailed, hit the shoulder, shot over the yellow line and slammed head-on into a black car.

He killed everyone inside. Misty Chalifoux, 28, died instantly, as did two of her daughters - nine-year-old Trista Chalifoux and 13-year-old Michelle Lisk. Six-year-old daughter Larissa was airlifted to hospital. She died the next day.

Yellowknee's blood alcohol level was .22 that night, nearly triple the legal limit of .08."

Clip Source: www.canada.com

SLAVE LAKE, Alta. - In a precedent-setting decision Thursday, an Alberta judge sentenced a drunk driver who killed four people to more than 20 years in prison, and moved to block people convicted of similar crimes from serving their sentences in the community.

Provincial court Judge Ernie Walter declared Raymond Yellowknee a long-term offender and sentenced him to 20 years and six months behind bars for drinking, driving and crashing head-on into an oncoming car. The crash killed a young mother and her three little girls.

The sentence is believed to be the longest yet handed down for drunk driving causing death in Canada.

Walter also said for the first time that drunk driving causing death is a "serious personal injury offence" in Alberta, an unprecedented legal label that adds deadly drunk drivers to the category of convicts who cannot apply to serve their sentences in the community under house arrest.

Tags: drunk driver, 20 years in prison, slave lake, alberta, canada

Rapid permafrost thaw expected

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:09:32 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud
clipper's remarks: "Climate warming is degrading permafrost, and roads, runways and building foundations in many parts of the North have been buckling and cracking as the top layer of the ground thaws. The increasingly mushy ground also has created "drunken forests," where trees now lean at strange angles.

At least 30 per cent of all the carbon stored in soils worldwide is found in the North -- and scientists worry rising temperatures will release carbon dioxide and methane, both potent greenhouse gases, now locked in the permafrost.

"To me, probably the biggest uncertainty is whether methane emissions are going to go up, and if they are, by how much," says Lawrence.

Last summer, the Arctic sea ice shrank to more than 30 per cent below average, setting a modern-day record. Temperatures over land in the western Arctic also were unusually warm, reaching more than 2 C above the 1978-2006 average and raising questions about whether the ice retreat was tied to the warming temperatures over land."

Clip Source: www.canada.com

researchers warn

Melting could happen much more quickly than previously thought, putting towns and roads at risk, study says

Permafrost, which covers close to half of Canada and threatens to release vast stores of carbon into the atmosphere, could undergo a much more rapid thaw than previously thought, according to an American study.

The rate of climate warming over northern Canada, Alaska, and Russia could more than triple if Arctic ice continues to retreat rapidly, says the report, which highlights the vulnerability of permafrost and the roadways, communities and ecosystems now sitting on the frozen ground.

"We are expecting the Arctic to warm faster than the rest of the world, and this suggests that in relatively short, 5-10 year periods that rate of warming can really go up," says David Lawrence, lead author of the study conducted at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Tags: permafrost, arctic, climate warming, canada, drunken forests

Clipmarks | jetcloud's clips

Stop the arrests of Journalists

Stop the Arrests of Journalists. Sign the Letter.

America: Freedom to Fascism

The Humungous Fungus

Fungus is world's largest living organism

Cannabis-based spray painkiller approved for cancer patients

IN REMEMBRANCE…

Major biological discovery…inside the Chernobyl reactor

Ice Road Truckers

Video Gallery & Podcasts

On TV

Hit the road

Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming

Cree remove blockade - drivers blast through

External Links

Protect Our Food

An Exploding Asteroid

Glacier Bay Park's Gravity Shifts As Ice Melts

Arctic seabed afire with lava-spewing volcanoes

drunk driver jailed 20 years

Rapid permafrost thaw expected

researchers warn

Melting could happen much more quickly than previously thought, putting towns and roads at risk, study says