The Detroit News – “He’s encased in ice, except his legs, which are sticking out like Popsicle sticks,” the caller phoned to tell this reporter. …

The warehouse is so easily accessible, a person in a wheelchair could get in with little effort. There are holes in the fence and in the side entrance. The elevator shaft is wide open. It appears no one has ever tried to close the bay doors.

A colony of homeless men live in the warehouse. Wednesday morning a few fires were burning inside oil drums. Scott Ruben, 38, huddled under filthy blankets not 20 paces from the elevator shaft. …

There are at least 19,000 homeless people in Detroit, by some estimates. Put another way, more than 1 in 50 people here are homeless. The human problem is so bad, and the beds so few, that some shelters in the city provide only a chair. The chair is yours as long as you sit in it. Once you leave, the chair is reassigned. Thousands of down-on-their-luck adults do nothing more with their day than clutch onto a chair. This passes for normal in some quarters of the city.

“I hate that musical chair game,” Ruben said. He said he’d rather live next to a corpse.

Convinced that it was indeed a body, this reporter made a discreet call to a police officer.
“Aw, just give 911 a call,” the cop said. “We’ll be called eventually.”

A call was placed to 911. A woman answered. She was told it was a reporter calling. The operator tried to follow, but seemed confused. “Where is this building?” She promised to contact the appropriate authorities. Twenty minutes or so went by when 911 called the newsroom. This time it was a man.

“Where’s this building?”
It was explained to him, as was the elevator shaft and the tomb of ice.
“Bring a jack-hammer,” this reporter suggested.
“That’s what we do,” he said.

Nearly 24 hours went by. The elevator shaft was still a gaping wound. There was no crime scene tape. The homeless continued to burn their fires. City schoolchildren still do not have the necessary books to learn. The train station continues to crumble. Too many homicides still go unsolved.

After another two calls to 911 on Wednesday afternoon (one of which was disconnected), the Detroit Fire Department called and agreed to meet nearby. Capt. Emma McDonald was on the scene. “Every time I think I’ve seen it all, I see this,” she said.

And with that they went about the work of recovering a person who might otherwise be waiting for the warm winds of spring. (01/30/09)
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The Telegraph / UK – The Turritopsis Nutricula is able to revert back to a juvenile form once it mates after becoming sexually mature.

Marine biologists say the jellyfish numbers are rocketing because they need not die.

Dr Maria Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute said: “We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion.”

The jellyfish are originally from the Caribbean but have spread all over the world.

Turritopsis Nutricula is technically known as a hydrozoan and is the only known animal that is capable of reverting completely to its younger self.

It does this through the cell development process of transdifferentiation.

Scientists believe the cycle can repeat indefinitely, rendering it potentially immortal.

While most members of the jellyfish family usually die after propagating, the Turritopsis nutricula has developed the unique ability to return to a polyp state. (01/30/09)
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Associated Press –Southern Australia suffered Friday from a record-breaking heat wave that has threatened rural towns with wildfires and sent ambulance crews after heat-stressed patients.

Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city recorded its third consecutive day of temperatures above 43 degrees Celsius (109 F) for the first time since 1855, when record-keeping began, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

The temperature in Melbourne topped 45.1 C (113 F) on Friday ahead of a cooler change that might even bring some thunder showers, the bureau said.Adelaide, the other major city on the south coast, is expected to match its longest heat wave in a century by Monday, with six consecutive days exceeding 40 C (104 F). The heat there buckled train and tram lines. …

Melbourne is the capital of Victoria state, where three rural towns were under threat from wildfires spreading quickly in the furnace-like conditions, Country Fire Authority deputy chief fire officer Geoff Conway said.

Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Richard Carlyon said firefighters will have to wait for rain to dampen the tinder-dry conditions.

State ambulance service chief Greg Sassella said more crews to help people affected by the heat were available on Friday, a day after 1,305 emergency cases were logged — more than double the normal load. (01/30/09)
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BBC Health Science — Could the humble worm hold the key to wiping out allergies and a whole lot of disorders of the immune system? Researchers in Nottingham are investigating whether giving hook worms to asthma sufferers can cure their condition. Another group in the US is trying a pig worm on patients with ulcerative colitis or inflammation of the colon and bowel. And scientists in Cambridge have proved that giving an extract of the tropical worm which causes bilharzia to mice can stop them developing type 1 diabetes.

The theory behind all this is that worms and other organisms, through our evolutionary history, developed a role in driving our immune systems. Professor Danny Altman, professor of immunity at Imperial College, said: “There is compelling evidence that something in our immune systems has changed since our ancestors, in fact has changed since our great grandparents. …

The scientists, who have all written articles for the journal, Immunology, said the key compound in question are found in worms, in mud and in the tiny organisms (flora) in our guts. Professor Graham Rook, an expert of medical microbiology at University College London, said: “What we think is that the immune system has become dependent on signals from certain organisms.” He said a fascinating recent study had illustrated this.

Bacteria were introduced to a group of amoebae. The amoebae did not like the bacteria and tried to kill them - but could not. And five years later neither organism could live without the other. The amoebae had deleted certain genes in their own immune systems and the bacteria had done the same so they could coexist peacefully. As a result, the amoebae no longer had a complete genome unless the bacteria were present.

Professor Rook said: “It now looks more and more likely that the development of our regulatory immune system depends on molecules that are encoded not in the genome of the human but in the genome of some other organism we lived with throughout history.” …

Professor Jan Bradley, a parasitologist from the University of Nottingham, said some worms could live in the human body for 15 to 20 years. She said: “The question I’ve been asking is how does a worm modify the host so it can survive that long? If you dissect any free-living organism it has worms. It’s full of them, in its blood, guts, everywhere. It is only in the last 50 years in Britain that humans have been free of worms. If, for instance, you look at the faeces of the Vikings you can find evidence of them having worms.” (01/29/09)
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A book review of Martin Rees’ Our Final Century by Steven B Kurtz: The book examines highlights and trends of human history from anthropological, environmental, and sci-tech perspectives.

Rees
discusses the 20th century arms race and the dilemma of mutually
assured destruction via nuclear weapons. Indeed, he thinks we are lucky
to have survived the past 50 years. He surveys the environmental
degradation and resource depletion that have accelerated since the
industrial age began, and appreciates the ‘green’ or full-cost
accounting that some economists have suggested which counts more than
monetary costs and profit.

Rees questions the value of the views
of the future by many known ‘experts’: “Scientists are often blind to
the ramifications of their own discoveries.” (p. 13). He gives examples
including the opinion of both computer designer Von Neumann and IBM
founder T.J. Watson that only a few computers would be needed in the
US. Rees generally agrees with Ray Kurzweil (The Age of Spiritual
Machines), Gordon Moore (Moore’s Law), Hans Moravec (robotics), and
John Sulston (Human Genome Project) that the speed of technological
change will continue increasing. But he perceives far more risk from
the likely progressions than do the others. And he integrates physical
limits, which most do not, noting “some limits are set by energy and
resources.” (p.20). Rather than viewing science as a requisite sum of
certainties, Rees agrees with Isaac Asimov, whom he quotes: “No matter
how much we learn, whatever is left, however small it may seem, is just
as infinitely complex as the whole was to start with.” (p. 142).

When
future probabilities are considered, best judgements usually depend
upon a consensus of best current evidence. Religious-like fervor in
adherance to particular theories is irrational behaviour; yet that
seems to be a dominant human trait. …

It seems to me that most humans have difficulty
thinking and behaving with long term horizons in mind. We may focus on,
for example, our next bonus, paycheck, job, meal, sexual encounter, or
crime. The tougher our personal circumstance is, the shorter term is
our required focus. Survival is number one. Recall the native American
notion of Seven Generations. A sustainable human future requires that
sort of thinking in my opinion, and I think Rees fully agrees.

All
in all, Rees has done a magnificent job of framing the risks of the
21st century. The book is quite accessible, and I would like to see it
required reading for all capable of high school level material. The
fewer of us flying blind into the future the better. (01/26/09)
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Touch the Soil Magazine is sponsoring a one day seminar. Discover how money is created, distributed and dissolved. The key to business, farm and career decision making. The Federal Reserve explained. For the youth inheriting the world and the parents and grandparents who want to help them.

The creation, distribution and dissolution of money (credit) is the blueprint the world followed to arrive where it is currently.

Understanding these processes is key to career and business decisions. It’s a knowledge indispensable for a world economically, socially and environmentally disoriented.

The material is easy to understand. Previous attendees say they have hope for the first time. The seminar is not about finding blame. The future is unlimited once a few critical misconceptions, that imprison our thinking, are brought to light.

Benjamin Gisim has been involved in billions of dollars of agricultural and business loans, fighting on behalf of farmers with credit challenges and working with movements seeking solutions to the financial crisis.

Mike Krajovic has over 20 years of professional experience in community and economic development including building economic prosperity in one of the nation’s most economically depressed regions.

Scheduled for Saturday, February 7, 2009 at the Red Lion Hotel, in Pocatello, Idaho 83201. (01/25/09)
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Ellen Brown writes: Economist John Kenneth Galbraith famously said, “The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.”  If banks can create money, why are we suffering from a “credit crunch”?  Why can’t banks create all the money they can find borrowers for?  Last fall, Congress committed an unprecedented $700 billion in taxpayer money to reversing the credit crisis, and the Federal Reserve has already fanned that into $8.5 trillion in loans and commitments.  But the bank bailout has proven to be no more than a boondoggle for a handful of lucky Wall Street banks, without getting credit flowing again.

To understand the real cause of the credit crisis and how it can be reversed, we first need to understand credit itself – what it is, where it comes from, and what the real tourniquet is that has limited its flow.  Banks actually create credit; and if private banks can do it, so could public banks or public treasuries.  The crisis is not one of “liquidity” but of “solvency.”  It has been caused, not by the banks’ inability to get credit (something they can create with accounting entries), but by their inability to meet the capital requirement imposed by the Bank for International Settlements, the private foreign head of the international banking system.  That inability, in turn, has been caused by the derivatives virus; and only a few big banks are seriously infected with it.  By bailing out these big banks, the government is actually spreading the virus by furnishing the funds for them to take over smaller regional banks.

A more effective alternative than trying to patch up the hopelessly imperiled derivatives positions of these few Wall Street banks would be to simply create another credit system with a pristine set of books.  We don’t need to fix the Wall Street disease; we can bypass the whole problem and create a new, healthy, parallel system.  A network of public banks (federal and state) could create “credit” just as private banks do now.  This credit could be extended at low interest rates to consumers and at very low interest to local governments, drastically reducing the cost of public projects by reducing the cost of funding them.

That is not a radical proposal.  It is what private banks themselves do every day. (01/24/09)
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Stephen Leahy writes: Our trees are dying. Throughout the western United States, cherished and protected forests are dying twice as fast as they did 20 years ago because of climate change, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science.

Fire did not kill these trees, nor did some massive insect outbreak. The trees in this wide-ranging study were “undisturbed stands of old growth forests”, said Jerry Franklin, a professor of forest resources at the University of Washington and one of 11 co-authors of the report. “The data in this study is from our most stable, resilient stands of trees,” Franklin told IPS.

What this means is that the United States’ best forests are getting thinner. It is like a town where the birth rate is stable but the mortality rate for all ages doubled over the past two decades. “If that was happening in your hometown you’d become very concerned,” said Nate Stephenson, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

This dramatic increase of in tree mortality applies to all kinds, sizes, ages and locations of trees. In the Pacific Northwest and southern British Columbia, the rate of tree death in older coniferous forests doubled in 17 years. In California, doubling mortality rates took a little longer at 25 years. For interior states it took 29 years. Mortality has increased in lock-step with rising temperatures of about 1 degree C in the last 30 years. Air pollution and ground level ozone were investigated and eliminated as the cause of the increased mortality, Stephenson told IPS.

Warmer temperatures in the west have meant the summer drought period is longer. The mountain snow pack contains less snow and melts much earlier in the spring. Warmer temperatures also favour insects like tree-damaging beetles. The combination of trees suffering moisture stress and a few more insect pests appears to be enough to tip the balance, said Tom Veblen of the University of Colorado at Boulder. “We’re seeing continental-scale evidence of warming,” Veblen said. “It is very likely tree mortality will increase further as temperatures continue to rise.”

Previous research has shown global warming is largely responsible for the enormous increase in forest fires in the west and the massive insect outbreaks like that of the mountain pine beetle, expected to kill 80 percent of the pine forest in Canada’s province of British Columbia by 2013.

Forests of all kinds contain more than 80 percent of Earth’s terrestrial biodiversity. Not only do they absorb carbon, forests produce 30 percent of the world’s oxygen. They are also a key part of the planet’s climate regulating system. About half of the world’s forests are already gone. (01/24/09)
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Fortune – As many big companies are announcing mass layoffs, these 20 top employers have at least 350 openings each right now. Which Best Companies to Work For are doing the most recruiting and what kind of candidates are they looking for? …

Edward Jones, 2009 Best Companies rank: 2, Top 2 locations: St. Louis, MO; Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ, Number of job openings (as of Jan. 13, 2009): 1,040 …

Google, 2009 Best Companies rank: 4, Top 3 locations: Mountain View, CA; New York City, NY; San Francisco, CA, Number of job openings (as of Jan. 13, 2009): 350 …

Wegmans Food Markets,  2009 Best Companies rank: 5, Top 3 locations: Rochester, NY; Buffalo, NY; Syracuse, NY, Number of job openings (as of Jan. 13, 2009): 2,000 …

Cisco Systems, 2009 Best Companies rank: 6, Top 3 locations: San Jose, CA; Research Triangle Park, NC; Boxborough, MA, Number of job openings (as of Jan. 13, 2009): 500 …

Methodist Hospital System, 2009 Best Companies rank: 8, Top 2 locations: Houston, TX; Baytown, TX; Number of job openings (as of Jan. 13, 2009): 400 … Plus 15 more employers hiring. (01/23/09)
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BBC Environmental Science – Gosat (Global Greenhouse Observation by Satellite) is a two-metric-tonne Earth-orbiting satellite which will map the abundance of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and where they are. The probe will lift off from the Tanegashima launch site in southern Japan early on Thursday. It will orbit the planet at an altitude of 666km during its five-year mission.

Japan’s Space Agency Jaxa says Gosat will “contribute to the international effort toward prevention of (global) warming”. They say that monitoring greenhouse gases is vital to promote and support measures designed to mitigate against climate change.

The Kyoto Protocol came into force in February 2005 is a comprehensive set of rules for reducing and restricting greenhouse gas emissions. The Gosat mission is designed to identify and monitor sources of CO2, to support compliance with international treaties and agreements such as Kyoto. But it could also shed light on a key problem in climate science.

Only about 50% of carbon emitted into the atmosphere, for example from fossil fuel combustion and land use, stays there. Most of the remainder is mopped up by the forests and oceans, which act as “sinks”. However, there appears to be a large carbon sink missing. …

Gosat (also known by its Japanese name Ibuki) will take measurements of two key greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) - over nearly the entire surface of the planet. It will carry two sensors, a Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS) and a Cloud and Aerosol Imager (CAI). …

Gosat is set to blast off between 0354 and 0416 GMT on Thursday from Tanageshima. (01/21/09)
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