The head of one of the US’s biggest industrial groups has launched a scathing attack on Barack Obama’s attempts to repair relations with companies, dubbing him ‘anti-business
They are small, yellow and designed to endure nothing more stressful than a quick journey around a bathtub. But after almost 20 years lost at sea, a flotilla of plastic ducks has been hailed for revolutionising mankind’s knowledge of ocean science.
The humble toys are part of a shipment of 29,000 packaged ducks, frogs, turtles and beavers made in China for a US firm called First Years Inc. They were in a crate that fell off the deck of a container ship during a journey across the Pacific from Hong Kong in January 1992.
Since that moment, they have bobbed tens of thousands of miles. Some washed up on the shores of Hawaii and Alaska; others have been stuck in Arctic ice. A few crossed the site near Newfoundland where the Titanic sank, and at least one is believed to have been found on a beach in Scotland.
Now the creatures, nicknamed the ‘Friendly Floatees’ by various broadcasters who have followed their progress over the years, have been immortalised in a book titled Moby-Duck. It not only chronicles their extraordinary odyssey, and what it has taught us about currents, but also lays bare a largely ignored threat to the marine environment: the vast […]
An inquiry by a federal watchdog agency found no evidence that scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration manipulated climate data to buttress the evidence in support of global warming, officials said on Thursday.
The inquiry, by the Commerce Department’s inspector general, focused on e-mail messages between climate scientists that were stolen and circulated on the Internet in late 2009 (NOAA is part of the Commerce Department). Some of the e-mails involved scientists from NOAA.
Climate change skeptics contended that the correspondence showed that scientists were manipulating or withholding information to advance the theory that the earth is warming as a result of human activity.
In a report dated Feb. 18 and circulated by the Obama administration on Thursday, the inspector general said, ‘We did not find any evidence that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data.
The decentralized protest group ‘Anonymous’ has a new target: no, it’s not a middle eastern dictator, a major bank or even a bit player in the military-industrial complex.
It’s none other than tea party financiers Charles and David Koch, who were being targeted, an open letter stated, for their attempts ‘to usurp American Democracy.’
‘Koch Industries, and oligarchs like them, have most recently started to manipulate the political agenda in Wisconsin,’ an announcement posted to anonnews.org1 declared.
‘Governor Walker’s union-busting budget plan contains a clause that went nearly un-noticed. This clause would allow the sale of publicly owned utility plants in Wisconsin to private parties (specifically, Koch Industries) at any price, no matter how low, without a public bidding process,’ they explained. ‘The Koch’s have helped to fuel the unrest in Wisconsin and the drive behind the bill to eliminate the collective bargaining power of unions in a bid to gain a monopoly over the state’s power supplies.
The group, which was responsible for taking MasterCard Worldwide offline2 for an entire day — along with numerous other organizations that plotted against secrets outlet WikiLeaks — said it would now be ‘actively seeking vulnerabilities’ in Koch industries.
‘In a world where corporate money has become the […]
Despite exam stress, a long stint in education is good for people’s blood pressure, according to researchers in the US.
High blood pressure, or hypertension, is linked to heart attacks, strokes and kidney failure.
The study, published in the journal BMC Public Health, shows the link is stronger in women than in men.
The British Heart Foundation said the findings supported the link between deprivation and heart disease risk.
Higher levels of education have been linked to lower levels of heart disease. The researchers suggest that blood pressure could be the reason why.
The study looked at 30 years of data from 3,890 people who were being followed as part of the Framingham Offspring Study.
People were divided into three groups, low education (12 years or less), middle education (13 to 16 years) and high education (17 years or more).
The average systolic blood pressure for the 30 year period was then calculated.
Women with low education had a blood pressure 3.26 mmHg higher than those with a high level of education. In men the difference was 2.26 mmHg.
Other factors, such as smoking, taking blood pressure medication and drinking, were taken into consideration and the effect on blood pressure remained, although at a much lower level.
Writing in the […]