Biology
Breach
November 22, 2009, from Associated Press
MIDDLETOWN, Pa. -- A small amount of radiation has been detected in a reactor building at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in central Pennsylvania. Officials say there is no public health risk.
About 150 employees were sent home after the radiation was detected Saturday afternoon.
Exelon Nuclear spokeswoman Beth Archer says investigators are searching for the cause. She says the radiation was quickly contained.
Radiological surveys showed the contamination was confined to surfaces inside the building.
The unit has been shut down for refueling and maintenance since Oct. 26. The company hopes to resume maintenance work Sunday.
Officials are testing workers for possible unusual radiation exposure.
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Climate
Chaos
November 22, 2011, from Seattle Times
So many pine, fir and spruce trees in the Northwest are riddled with bugs and disease that major tree die-offs are expected to rip through a third of Eastern Washington forests -- an area covering nearly 3 million acres -- in the next 15 years, according to new state projections.
Because Washington's forests are deteriorating so quickly, the state commissioner of public lands last week said he'll appoint an emergency panel of scientists and foresters to seek ways to stabilize or reverse the decline.
November 22, 2011, from Associated Press
Heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are building up so high, so fast, that some scientists now think the world can no longer limit global warming to the level world leaders have agreed upon as safe.
New figures from the U.N. weather agency Monday showed that the three biggest greenhouse gases not only reached record levels last year but were increasing at an ever-faster rate, despite efforts by many countries to reduce emissions.
November 22, 2009, from Guardian (UK)
The world's largest ice sheet has started to melt along its coastal fringes, raising fears that global sea levels will rise faster than scientists expected.
The East Antarctic ice sheet, which makes up three-quarters of the continent's 14,000 sq km, is losing around 57bn tonnes of ice a year into surrounding waters, according to a satellite survey of the region.
Scientists had thought the ice sheet was reasonably stable, but measurements taken from Nasa's gravity recovery and climate experiment (Grace) show that it started to lose ice steadily from 2006.
The measurements suggest the polar continent could soon contribute more to global sea level rises than Greenland, which is shedding more than 250bn tonnes of ice a year, adding 0.7mm to annual sea level rises.
November 22, 2009, from Reuters
COPENHAGEN, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Sixty-five world leaders have confirmed they will attend a U.N. conference in Copenhagen in December that will try to clinch a new global climate deal, and many more are considering, Danish officials said on Sunday.
Facing splits in the climate talks, Denmark 10 days ago formally invited the heads of state and government of 191 U.N. member states to come for the final two days of the Dec. 7-18 conference to push for a deal at the meeting, originally meant for environment ministers.
November 22, 2009, from Washington Post
Electronic files that were stolen from a prominent climate research center and made public last week provide a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes battle to shape the public perception of global warming.
While few U.S. politicians bother to question whether humans are changing the world's climate -- nearly three years ago the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded the evidence was unequivocal -- public debate persists. And the newly disclosed private exchanges among climate scientists at Britain's Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia reveal an intellectual circle that appears to feel very much under attack, and eager to punish its enemies.
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Resource
Depletion
November 22, 2009, from BBC (UK)
Ocean acidification could cause fish to become "fatally attracted" to their predators, according to scientists.
A team studying the effects of acidification - caused by dissolved CO2 - on ocean reefs found that it leaves fish unable to "smell danger".
Young clownfish that were reared in the acidified water became attracted to rather than repelled by the chemical signals released by predatory fish.... In the test, the fish reared in normal water avoided the stream of water that their predators had been swimming in. They detected the odour of a predator and swam away from it.
But, Ms Dixson said, fish raised in the more acidic water were strongly attracted to both the predatory and the non-predatory flumes.
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Recovery
November 22, 2009, from Science Daily
New scientific discoveries are moving society toward the era of "personalized solar energy," in which the focus of electricity production shifts from huge central generating stations to individuals in their own homes and communities.... The report describes development of a practical, inexpensive storage system for achieving personalized solar energy. At its heart is an innovative catalyst that splits water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen that become fuel for producing electricity in a fuel cell. The new oxygen-evolving catalyst works like photosynthesis, the method plants use to make energy, producing clean energy from sunlight and water.
"Because energy use scales with wealth, point-of-use solar energy will put individuals, in the smallest village in the nonlegacy world and in the largest city of the legacy world, on a more level playing field," the report states.
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