Radioactive kitty litter may have ruined our best hope to store nuclear waste

 

Some of the most dangerous nuclear waste in the US is currently scattered between 77 locations all over the country, awaiting permanent storage. Until February, many experts suggested that the best place to put it was a facility about 40 miles east of Carlsbad, New Mexico, called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). For 15 years, WIPP has operated as the first and only permanent, deep geologic nuclear waste storage facility in the country, holding "low level" radioactive materials — mostly clothing and tools exposed to radiation from nuclear weapons production — in steel barrels more than 2,150 feet below the Earth’s surface.

But earlier this year two emergencies brought that suggestion — and WIPP’s future — into question. And now it seems kitty litter may be to blame.

 

What happened?

WIPP is in a salt desert, and much of the work there involves burrowing through the salt and using huge elevators to deposit the stuff at surface level. The resulting underground caverns are then filled with radioactive waste and eventually closed shut, sealed forever.

Investigators search for a radiation leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, NM. (Department of Energy)

In February, according to a press release from the US Department of Energy — which oversees operations at WIPP — two things happened to stall that relatively simple process.

First, on February 5th, a salt-hauling truck caught fire. That would be an inconvenience on the side of a highway, but in an enclosed salt cavern surrounded by nuclear waste, it’s a potential catastrophe. Workers evacuated the site. Fortunately no one was hurt. But the fire was significant enough to shut down underground operations until investigators could figure out what happened and how to stop it from happening again. Surface-level operations continued.

But not for long. Nine days later, late at night on Valentine’s Day, an alarm sounded, indicating that radioactivity was present in the air underground. No one was below ground at the time, but employees on the surface activated massive fans designed to ventilate the underground air. The next day, another monitor went off — this one on the surface — indicating airborne radiation. Employees who worked outside on the surface were told to take shelter inside buildings completely separated from storage operations. Valves allowing air to flow underground were sealed with high-density expanding foam. Everything came to a standstill, indefinitely.

 

Fallout

There are no indications that anyone has been injured from the radiation leak. (All employees went through examinations for radiation exposure; a DOE press release says most workers were not affected, and those who were "received less exposure than a person receives from a chest X-ray.") But for months, nothing has changed. The standstill remains. WIPP’s 850 or so employees are mainly sitting around, waiting (or "performing surface facilities maintenance or assisting with procedure reviews and revisions") while investigators from the US Department of Energy (DOE), the New Mexico Environment Department and elsewhere attempt to figure out what happened.

Initially, there were two hypotheses. The first was that something had gone wrong with the supports inside the cavern where waste was being stored. If that were the case, it meant a piece of salt rock or a steel support had fallen into one of the sealed barrels, puncturing it and releasing radiation into the air.

"That was an unlikely possibility," says Norbert T. Rempe, PhD, a retired geologist who spent decades as a principal engineer at WIPP. The cavern where the radiation monitor went off had been dug only recently, so the chances that supports had eroded or collapsed were probably slim.

Organic kitty litter likely caused a steel barrel's seal to puncture at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, NM. The damage and the resulting radiation leak could close the facility, experts say. (Department of Energy)

More likely, he said, was the second hypothesis: that something had gone awry inside one of the radioactive containers — that the radioactive material had become hot for some reason, expanding and puncturing a steel barrel from the inside.

Last month, DOE investigators went into the cavern. Pictures showed that the latter hypothesis was true; a waste container’s lid was unsealed, and dust around the lid had turned yellow from the unusual heat emanating from inside. Each barrel is labeled to track where it came from. The punctured barrel originated from Los Alamos National Labs.

Jim Conca, PhD, a geologist who worked for years at WIPP who now blogs at Forbes about energy issues, believes he knows what blew the lid off at least one of WIPP’s radioactive barrels. The culprit, he wrote, was kitty litter.

"When someone decides to deviate, that is a bad, bad thing."

As Conca explains it, inorganic cat litter has properties that make it ideal for stabilizing nitrates in radioactive material — for ensuring that it doesn’t dry out and become dangerously hot. So kitty litter is often mixed in barrels with the low-level waste that’s eventually sent to WIPP. What happened at WIPP, he believes, is that one of the radioactive shipments was mixed with organic instead of inorganic material. "‘Green’ cat litter," he writes, is "made with materials like wheat or corn. These organic litters do not have the silicate properties needed to chemically stabilize nitrate the correct way." The result: "solutions can ignite when they dry out."

In other words, the whole problem at WIPP — the radiation leak, the months-long stall in operations, the worries over safety — results from one person’s mess up. (Yesterday, a DOE press release confirmed that kitty litter "may have caused a chemical reaction" that lead to the leak.)

"Everything nuclear is proceduralized," he tells The Verge. "It’s well laid out and everything everyone does is supposed to go up and down the chain of command. When you decide on a procedure for doing something like treating this waste, you don’t deviate from it. Ever. And when someone decides to deviate, that is a bad, bad thing."

He continues: "In this case, it could shut down the most successful nuclear repository in history."

 

Moving forward

Apart from the absurdity in a multibillion-dollar project halted by the decision to use off-brand kitty litter, the real lesson here may lie in the fragility of even the best nuclear storage facility. Corrective action at WIPP could be a massive undertaking. How many other barrels contain the dangerous organic cat litter? Are all of those barrels underground at WIPP? Are they awaiting shipment at surface level in places like Los Alamos? Or are they located at the temporary storage site in Andrews, Texas, where some containers were transferred when problems arose at WIPP?

"Expert assessment will be needed," writes Per Peterson, a professor and researcher at UC Berkeley’s Department of Nuclear Engineering, in an email shared with The Verge, to merely "determine whether the safety benefits of stabilizing or repackaging the material in these drums are justified by the risk to personnel who would attempt to do this work."

And if the DOE decides stabilizing or repackaging the material is unjustified, that would close WIPP for good.

"If that happened, it would be a shame and a disaster — particularly for taxpayers," says the retired WIPP geologist Rempe. The DOE estimates the total cost of the WIPP plant to be $7.2 billion.

Even if WIPP does begin operating again, "we have no idea how long this will take until WIPP is back to normal operations, or what the new normal operations will be," Rempe says. "No one knows right now. And it could be a long time before anyone knows."

'Land grabbing' could help feed at least 300 million people

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Crops grown on "land-grabbed" areas in developing countries could have the potential to feed an extra 100 million people worldwide, a new study has shown.

The improved infrastructure brought about by foreign investment could increase the productivity of subsistence farmlands in countries such as Indonesia and Papua New Guinea and could mean these lands can feed at least 300 million people around the world. This is compared to about 190 million people that could be fed if the land was left tended to by the local population.

The findings have been published today, 27 June, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters.

The large-scale acquisition of land by foreign governments and business -- more commonly known as land grabbing -- is a contentious issue, particularly in Africa where a large number of deals have taken place in regions facing food security problems and malnutrition.

Some argue that investment by foreign governments and business will drastically improve crop yields, generate new jobs and bring new knowledge and infrastructure to often deprived areas. Others highlight the fact that any food grown is often exported to other regions and argue that such deals can strip local communities of their land, water and natural resources, leaving them in a far worse state.

In their study, the researchers, from the Politecnico di Milano, Italy, and University of Virginia, US, quantified the maximum amount of food that could be produced from crops grown on acquired lands and the number of people that this could feed. They also compared the use of traditional farming techniques to industrialised agricultural methods, to come up with the yield gap.

To arrive at their results, the researchers used a unique dataset of all land deals, greater than 200 hectares, which had occurred after 2000. Each land deal included information regarding the spatial extent of the acquired land, the dominant crop, and whether a deal was concluded with a signed or oral contract, or just intended with an expression of interest.

The researchers calculated the potential maximum crop yield from each of these deals and then used the crop's food calories to determine the amount of people it could feed.

If all of the acquired lands were farmed to their full capacity -- a 100% closure of the yield gap -- there would be a 308 per cent increase in rice production, a 280 per cent increase in maize production, a 148 per cent increase in sugar cane production, and a 130 per cent increase in oil palm production, the researchers calculated.

Taking into account the proportion of crops that can be used for food production, as well as the amount needed for a "balanced diet," the results showed that between 300 and 550 million people could be fed by crops grown in the acquired land, compared with between 190 and 370 million people that could be fed if the local community used the land without making major investments.

The results also revealed that the most targeted countries for land grabs are Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and the former Sudan. Altogether, these nations account for around 82 per cent of the total food calories that can be produced by acquired croplands worldwide.

It has been reported in previous studies that around 32.9 million hectares of land have been acquired by large-scale international investors for different purposes. A total of 22 million hectares were acquired for agriculture.

The authors, Maria Cristina Rulli from Politecnico di Milano and Paolo D'Odorico from University of Virginia, said: "Our study has provided a comprehensive assessment of the amount of food that can potentially be produced in land acquired by foreign investors in countries such as Sudan and Indonesia."

Accordingly, "Policy makers need to be aware that if this food were used to feed the local populations it would be sufficient to abate malnourishment in each of these countries even without investments aiming at the closure of the yield gap. Such investments would lead to substantial improvements in crop yields mainly in African countries.

"At the moment there are still open questions which would help inform the debate over what happens to acquired land such as, what happens to food produced? Is it shipped abroad? Were these lands already used for agriculture prior to the acquisition, and (if so) for the cultivation of what crops? With what yields? Answers to these questions would allow us to quantify the decrease in food available to the local communities, and come up with management strategies to mitigate possible negative impacts on the local communities of large scale land acquisition."

Some dogs and cats prone to sunburn: How to protect your animal from skin damage

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White cats are particularly sensitive to the sun. Skin damage to the nose is often not identified as sunburn.

Excessive sunbathing damages the skin. Humans are not the only ones who need to monitor their exposure to UV rays: animals are at risk too. Dogs and cats with white or thin coats are at particular risk, as are animals with very closely shorn fur or with certain pre-existing conditions. Dermatologist Christa Horvath-Ungerböck from the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna explains which animals are particularly sensitive, how to prevent sun damage to the skin, and how to treat a sunburned animal.

Human or animals skin with little or no pigmentation is very sensitive to the sun in general. Hairless pets or pets with very short or thin fur can also be vulnerable. For dogs and cats this applies in particular to those parts of the skin that are regularly exposed to the sun. These include the ears, the bridge of the nose, the skin around the eyes, and the back. “Some animals particularly enjoy lying on their backs to bask in the sun. This exposes the skin on their bellies, which is often hairless, to the rays of the sun, increasing the risk of sunburn,” reports veterinary dermatologist Christa Horvath-Ungerböck.

Particularly vulnerable pets

House pets with white or short fur are at particular risk of sunburn. The Dogo Argentino breed, white bulldogs, Dalmatians, boxers, whippets, beagles and white or multi-coloured cats with white patches have skin that is very sensitive to light, especially on their heads. In summer animals with shorn fur can also have a problem. The short hair allows UV rays penetrate down to the sensitive skin and cause sunburn.

Hairless dogs and cats are naturally more sensitive to the sun, since they lack the natural sun protection fur affords. Here too though, skin pigmentation plays a role, and darker animals are less vulnerable to UV rays. Owners of vulnerable breeds should take particular care to protect their animals from the sun.

Sun protection for animals

“As a rule, animals should have a shady place to lie in. Especially at midday, when the sun is at its strongest and presents the greatest risk, not just for the skin but for the animal overall”, explains dermatologist Horvath-Ungerböck. Particularly sensitive animals require sun protection in the form of a waterproof sunscreen with an SPF of at least 30 or a sunblock containing zinc oxide, for example. 

For longer hikes through the mountains where the sun’s rays are particularly aggressive, sensitive animals should wear a t-shirt, coat or hat for protection.

The skin specialist advises owners not to worry: “Not every white dog or white cat needs sunscreen or clothing to protect it from the sun. If sun damage has already occurred though, or if an animal is highly sensitive, it is up to us to protect it from further damage.”

Treating sunburn in animals

If sunburn is visible as reddened, warm or flaking skin, the animal should be moved to the shade as quickly as possible. Cool compresses and ointments to soothe the skin can help relieve the initial symptoms. If the burn is severe, a veterinarian should be consulted as treatment with a cortisone product may be indicated to prevent inflammation. If the skin changes present as a secondary infection, antibiotics may be indicated. The affected animal will need to be well protected from the sun in future to prevent permanent damage.

Certain pre-existing conditions can increase skin sensitivity

Some illnesses and genetic defects that result in a thin coat can make the skin more sensitive to sunburn. Any longer-term stimulus that results in a loss of fur is a possible factor. These can include parasitic infections, chronic skin conditions, or congenital hairlessness.  In some cases, exposure to the sun can worsen an existing condition. Animals with autoimmune skin diseases must be carefully protected from the sun, for example. And areas of the skin that were covered by fur but are suddenly exposed due to hair loss, such as scar tissue after an operation or injury, should be carefully observed and shielded as needed.

Damage caused by sun exposure

In animals, sunburn results in an acute inflammation of the skin that can cause itching or even pain, depending on the individual animal. Frequent sunburns can lead to pre-cancerous conditions or even actual skin tumours. “We sometimes see squamous cell carcinoma on the heads of white, outdoor cats as the result of chronic sun exposure. The affected areas of the skin then need to be surgically removed,” Horvath-Ungerböck explains.

Scientists identify new microbes linked to severe diarrhea

 

June 27, 2014

University of Maryland

Diarrhea is a major cause of childhood mortality in developing countries and ranks as one of the top four causes of death among young children in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. In a finding that may one day help control diarrhea, researchers have identified microorganisms that may trigger diarrheal disease and others that may protect against it. These microbes were not widely linked to the condition previously.

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Mihai Pop, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, recently concluded a major study of diarrheal pathogens in young children from low-income countries.

In a finding that may one day help control a major cause of death among children in developing countries, a team of researchers led by faculty from the University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Maryland School of Medicine has identified microorganisms that may trigger diarrheal disease and others that may protect against it. These microbes were not widely linked to the condition previously.

"We were able to identify interactions between microbiota that were not previously observed, and we think that some of those interactions may actually help prevent the onset of severe diarrhea," says O. Colin Stine, a professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

A much better understanding of these interactions is important, Stine adds, as they could lead to possible dietary interventions. Moderate to severe diarrhea (MSD) is a major cause of childhood mortality in developing countries and ranks as one of the top four causes of death among young children in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Stine and Mihai Pop, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, College Park led the six-year project funded by $10.1 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The research results are available in a paper published in the journal Genome Biology.

The researchers used a technique called high-throughput 16S rRNA genomic sequencing to examine both "good" and "bad" microbiota -- the tens of trillions of microbes that inhabit the human intestinal system -- in samples taken from 992 children in Bangladesh, The Gambia, Kenya and Mali under the age of 5 who were suffering from MSD.

The researchers identified statistically significant disease associations with several organisms already implicated in diarrheal disease, such as members of the Escherichia/Shigella genus and Campylobacter jejuni. They also found that organisms not widely believed to cause the disease, including Streptococcus and Granulicatella, correlated with the condition in their study. In addition, the study revealed that the Prevotella genus and Lactobacillus ruminis may play a protective role against diarrhea.

The project is an offshoot of a $20 million study commissioned by the Gates Foundation in 2006. The Global Enterics Multicenter Study (GEMS) was launched in response to unanswered questions surrounding the burden and etiology of childhood diarrhea in developing countries.

GEMS collected troves of useful data on MSD, yet there were still some uncertainties, says Pop, who also has an appointment in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies.

For example, in almost 50 percent of the children examined with diarrhea, the condition could not be attributed to a specific causal pathogen. The GEMS research also found numerous children carrying Shigella, which is known to cause problems, yet the children showed no signs of MSD.

The Gates Foundation contacted the two University of Maryland scientists in 2007, looking for new analyses of the GEMS data via a combination of computational biology, epidemiology and public health.

"New technologies have opened up new windows of discovery, so they asked us to look at the samples," says Pop, who adds that he and Stine expect to conduct further genomic and epidemiological studies to assess the potential development of diet- or microbiological-based therapeutics.

Adding sugar to high-fat Western diet could be worse than high-fat diet alone

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A high-fructose, high-fat diet can cause harmful effects to the livers of adult rats, according to new research published in Experimental Physiology, providing new insight into the effects of adding fructose to a Western diet high in fat.

The study showed that short-term consumption of a Western diet, rich in saturated fats and fructose, is more damaging for healthy liver development than following a high fat diet alone.

Dr Susanna Iossa, who led the study at the University of Naples, Italy, said:

"This result points to the harmful effect of adding fructose to the usual western, high-fat diet and, together with other related findings, should stimulate the discussion on the use of fructose and fructose-containing sweeteners in beverages and packaged foods.

We performed the research by using an animal model of adult sedentary humans, consisting of adult rats, that were fed for two weeks with either a low-fat diet, a high-fat diet or a diet rich in fat and fructose. This latter diet is very similar in composition to the diet consumed by the large majority of the Western population. After the diet period, we evaluated liver function and we found that the presence of fructose in the high-fat diet exacerbated the impairment of this important metabolic organ, by increasing the build-up of fat in the liver, and decreasing liver insulin sensitivity.

"Much more research should be undertaken in the future, especially regarding the impact of the high-fat high-fructose diet on other metabolically important organs, in order to establish the real impact of this unhealthy dietary habit on health and well-being."

Climate change and the ecology of fear

 

June 27, 2014

Northeastern University College of Science

Climate change is predicted to have major impacts on the many species that call our rocky shorelines home. Indeed, species living in these intertidal habitats, which spend half their day exposed to air and the other half submerged by water, may be subjected to a double whammy as both air and water temperatures rise. Given the reliance of human society on nearshore coastal ecosystems, it is critical that we better understand how climate change will affect them.

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A state-​​of-​​the-​​art heating and cooling system holds the water and air tem­per­a­ture in Trussell’s exper­i­mental habi­tats at exactly 2.5 degrees Cel­sius above the cur­rent tem­per­a­tures in Nahant bay.

Fear isn't just a human emotion -- it's also a pow­erful eco­log­ical phe­nom­enon. Geoff Trussell, pro­fessor and director of Northeastern's Marine Sci­ence Center in Nahant, Mass­a­chu­setts, has been studying the ecology of fear since he first came to the uni­ver­sity back in 2002.

He's dis­cov­ered some sur­prising things: When prey living in the inter­tidal zone sense a predator nearby, they are much less effi­cient at con­verting energy into growth. They pro­duce so much ner­vous energy in the form of ele­vated metab­o­lism, stress hor­mones, heat-​​shock pro­teins, and antiox­i­dant enzymes that there isn't a lot left over to build new tissues.

Trussell, who is chair of the Depart­ment of Marine and Envi­ron­mental Sci­ences, believes this fact can be a crit­ical driver for deter­mining how an overall ecosystem will fare. Resources and predator abun­dance will always fluc­tuate, but it's how the middle species deal with those fluc­tu­a­tions that deter­mines the way the whole system will respond. As he explained, "It's that species in the middle that have to trade off their need to feed with the risk of being eaten by a predator that's ulti­mately going to shape how the system behaves."

But there's one thing that's been missing from this cal­culus: the role of cli­mate change. Some studies have exam­ined how cli­mate change inter­acts with fear, Trussell said, but most of them haven't been very real­istic. The problem, he explained, is that they all imagine a con­stantly ele­vated tem­per­a­ture based on cli­mate change pro­jec­tions put forth by the Inter­gov­ern­mental Panel on Cli­mate Change. They don't account for nat­ural cli­mate vari­a­tion seen on a local scale.

"If you bake any­thing under a high tem­per­a­ture all the time, you're going to get an impact," Trussell said. So in new research pub­lished in the journal Global Change Biology, Trussell and his team took a dif­ferent approach. The researchers built a state-​​of-​​the-​​art system that allows them to con­stantly adjust the water and air tem­per­a­tures in their exper­i­mental habi­tats, holding them 2.5 degrees Cel­sius above actual tem­per­a­ture that is con­tin­u­ously mea­sured in Nahant.

The con­ser­v­a­tive nature of their approach makes their striking results even more sig­nif­i­cant, Trussell said. They found that when a prey species, in this case a snail called Nucella Lapillus, sensed the chem­ical cues of a predator, the inva­sive green crab, it ate fewer mus­sels and thus as expected expe­ri­enced less growth.

But when the team intro­duced the warming sce­nario, that effect was even more pro­nounced. Despite eating just as many mus­sels as in the non-​​warming sce­nario, the snails actu­ally lost weight under the warming conditions.

"You've got these ani­mals that are already burning a lot of energy because they're wor­ried about get­ting eaten," Trussell explained. "And then you throw on top of that the stress that's imposed by tem­per­a­ture increases and even­tu­ally what you end up seeing is that the ani­mals struggle to make a living."

The com­bined effects of pre­da­tion risk and warming seem to create even bigger chal­lenges for these middle species, which Trussell believes are inte­gral to the overall health of an ecosystem. The results, he said, sug­gest that the impacts of cli­mate change may be most sig­nif­i­cant in areas where the fear of being eaten is par­tic­u­larly impor­tant to com­mu­nity dynamics.

"Very rarely are species out there in iso­la­tion just dealing with tem­per­a­ture and its poten­tial increases. They're inter­acting with other species as well and all the chal­lenges that they present, Trussell said. "So looking at how cli­mate is impacting these inter­acting species is what we really need to do if we're going to under­stand the eco­log­ical con­se­quences of cli­mate change.

To address climate change, nothing substitutes for reducing carbon dioxide emissions

 

The politically expedient way to mitigate climate change is essentially no way at all, according to a comprehensive new study by University of Chicago climatologist Raymond Pierrehumbert.

Among the climate pollutants humans put into the atmosphere in significant quantities, the effects of carbon dioxide (CO₂) are the longest-lived, with effects on climate that extend thousands of years after emissions cease. But finding the political consensus to act on reducing CO₂ emissions has been nearly impossible. So there has been a movement to make up for that inaction by reducing emissions of other, shorter-lived gasses, such as methane, hydrofluorocarbons, and nitrous oxide, and particulates such as soot and black carbon, all of which contribute to warming as well.

Pierrehumbert 's study shows that effort to be, as he puts it, a delusion. "Until we do something about CO₂, nothing we do about methane or these other things is going to matter much for climate," he said.

Pierrehumbert is the Louis Block Professor in Geophysical Sciences at UChicago, and holder of the King Carl XVI Gustaf Chair in Environmental Sciences at Stockholm University for 2014-2015. His study, published in Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, brings together findings from the scientific literature with new research and analysis. Its conclusions are clear.

"Ray convincingly shows the benefit and importance of doing everything we can to lower CO₂ emissions, and as soon as possible," said Katherine H. Freeman, professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University. "We should lower short-lived pollutants like methane too. But, as he makes clear, we should not let them distract us from the urgent need to stop burning fossil fuels."

The basic physics of climate pollutants has been well known for a long time. The warming effect of methane and other short-lived climate pollutants disappears quite quickly after the pollutants are removed from the atmosphere. When you remove them, you get a one-time-only, lump-sum benefit. CO₂, on the other hand, lingers in the atmosphere. And if you are still emitting CO₂ while you are reducing methane and its fellows, that additional CO₂ continues to affect the climate for thousands of years.

Perhaps as a result of wishful thinking, the policy implications of those facts had become confused, said Pierrehumbert. Part of the problem is that the statistical tool used to compare the climate effect of gasses is badly flawed. The measure, called Global Warming Potential (GWP), predicts the effect on climate by comparing the emission rate of carbon dioxide with the emission rate of methane. But a one-ton-per-year reduction in the amount of methane emitted translates into a single lowering of the global thermostat, while a one-ton-per-year reduction in CO₂ yields a climate benefit that increases over time. That's because each extra ton of CO₂ that would have been emitted would have irreversibly ratcheted up the global thermostat by an additional increment.

Despite its well-known defects, GWP has been used since 1990 and was incorporated into the Kyoto Protocols in the climate-trading schemes implemented by Europe. Pierrehumbert proposes a different metric, which looks at the climate effect of reducing CO₂ emission by a fixed number of tons and then finds the rate by which you have to reduce methane emissions to get the same effect.

Pierrehumbert's study doesn't propose a single "right" policy on climate change, said Richard Alley, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at Penn State. "But it is a very useful analysis that will be viewed carefully by people who are interested in making good policies, and the main conclusions will help inform those policies."

Pierrehumbert himself hopes that his work will help lead policymakers to abandon Kyoto-style multi-gas trading schemes, which treat the gasses equivalently, and put the emphasis on CO₂ for the next 50 years or so. "I see puncturing the excessive enthusiasm about short-lived climate pollution control as a step in the right direction," he said, "because it takes away one of the grounds for procrastination on CO₂. If you're serious about protecting climate, it's the CO₂ you've got to deal with first."

Unprecedented 3-D view of important brain receptor

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X-ray crystal structure of the NMDA receptor showing its mushroom- like shape, with receptor subunits in different colors.

Researchers with Oregon Health & Science University's Vollum Institute have given science a new and unprecedented 3-D view of one of the most important receptors in the brain -- a receptor that allows us to learn and remember, and whose dysfunction is involved in a wide range of neurological diseases and conditions, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, schizophrenia and depression.

The unprecedented view provided by the OHSU research, published online June 22 in the journal Nature, gives scientists new insight into how the receptor -- called the NMDA receptor -- is structured. And importantly, the new detailed view gives vital clues to developing drugs to combat the neurological diseases and conditions.

"This is the most exciting moment of my career," said Eric Gouaux, a senior scientist at the Vollum Institute and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. "The NMDA receptor is one of the most essential, and still sometimes mysterious, receptors in our brain. Now, with this work, we can see it in fascinating detail."

Receptors facilitate chemical and electrical signals between neurons in the brain, allowing those neurons to communicate with each other. The NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate) receptor is one of the most important brain receptors, as it facilitates neuron communication that is the foundation of memory, learning and thought. Malfunction of the NMDA receptor occurs when it is increasingly or decreasingly active and is associated with a wide range of neurological disorders and diseases. Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, depression, schizophrenia and epilepsy are, in many instances, linked to problems with NMDA activity.

Scientists across the world study the NMDA receptor; some of the most notable discoveries about the receptor during the past three decades have been made by OHSU Vollum scientists.

The NMDA receptor makeup includes receptor "subunits" -- all of which have distinct properties and act in distinct ways in the brain, sometimes causing neurological problems. Prior to Gouaux's study, scientists had only a limited view of how those subtypes were arranged in the NMDA receptor complex and how they interacted to carry out specific functions within the brain and central nervous system.

Gouaux's team of scientists -- Chia-Hsueh Lee, Wei Lu, Jennifer Michel, April Goehring, Juan Du and Xianqiang Song -- created a 3-D model of the NMDA receptor through a process called X-ray crystallography. This process throws x-ray beams at crystals of the receptor; a computer calibrates the makeup of the structure based on how those x-ray beams bounce off the crystals. The resulting 3-D model of the receptor, which looks something like a bouquet of flowers, shows where the receptor subunits are located, and gives unprecedented insight into their actions.

"This new detailed view will be invaluable as we try to develop drugs that might work on specific subunits and therefore help fight or cure some of these neurological diseases and conditions," Gouaux said. "Seeing the structure in more detail can unlock some of its secrets -- and may help a lot of people."

O que um gringo pensa do Brasil

 

Duas semanas de Brasil e meu horário ainda está desregulado. Meu estômago também está desregulado. Ontem me levaram a um bloco de maracatu num inferninho. Bebemos caipirinhas demais. Alguns amigos ainda estão por aqui no quarto, batucando e bebendo. O que não contam, antes de vir para o Brasil, é que aqui a festa não acaba nunca.

As mulheres são tudo o que se diz delas: morenas, com curvas, chapinhas e obscenamente bonitas. E não têm qualquer pudor de chegar nos homens. São o que aqui se chama de desencanadas. Têm a consciência menos pesada do que as europeias.

Dos homens, nem sei o que dizer; quase não reparei neles. Dos que me foram apresentados, percebi que a maioria é fanho, com voz de ganso - pode ser o sotaque. Muitos deles usam uma barba de Conchita Wurst. A versão feminina usa vestido florido e sapato de boneca. Uma dessas, desde a hora que acordou, não para de falar comigo.

Brasileiros têm horror ao silêncio. Tudo precisa ser comentado; do seu sapato ao seu topete, da umidade relativa do ar ao jogo do Irã, e quase não tem um lugar onde não existe alguém falando, muito menos espaço para ficar sozinho. Ainda procuro descobrir as regras de convívio. Uma que logo percebi é que em grupo todo mundo pode falar ao mesmo tempo. Aquele que for mais rápido pode cortar o assunto do outro. Quanto a isso, parece que não há nenhum problema, ninguém se irrita. Mas o assunto tampouco é retomado.

Uma diversão tipicamente brasileira é puxar papo na fila, no bar, no mictório. Em poucos minutos é possível saber da vida inteira de um desconhecido que mija do seu lado. Você entra no banheiro público e sai de lá com um amigo novo. É uma intimidade que, para quem não está acostumado, pode passar por deseducada. Disse uma tiazinha do hostel que essa invasão da intimidade explica as altas taxas de violência - o que faz algum sentido. Roubos e furtos não faltam por aqui. Não encontrei ninguém que não tenha tido o celular roubado ou furtado pelo menos uma vez nos últimos anos.

No momento só se fala de futebol, mas alguns parecem um pouco apreensivos com as eleições daqui a alguns meses. Dilma, Sarney, Luciano Huck, muitos invocam esses nomes na tevê. O que será Cátia Fonseca?

O país é uma festa sem fim, rico de diversões. Todos os lugares por onde passei, vi ruas pintadas de verde e amarelo, bandeirinhas verdes e amarelas, poodles e crianças pintados de verde e amarelo.

A cerveja é fraca, aguada. Mas o calor ajuda.

Os fracos da cabeça, além de bêbados, põem o som do carro no último volume - olha aí a invasão da privacidade de que eu estava falando. Funk carioca institucionalizou-se como música oficial. O funk domina as ruas. É um poder paralelo. Já os bêbados são os mesmos de todos os lugares.

Uma de minhas diversões preferidas é observar como brasileiros reagem quando criticamos alguma coisa que não funciona direito aqui. Eles ficam apreensivos em saber o que os estrangeiros pensam deles. Adoram se sentir o centro das atenções. A Copa, nesse sentido, cobriu o país de júbilo. Tornou real o sonho brasileiro de ser o centro das atenções. A maneira mais rápida de irritar um brasileiro, segundo uma mendiga que conheci, é falar mal do país - mas eles mesmos são ótimos nisso.

As capitais combinam a arquitetura antiga com a moderna. Mas os prédios mais antigos vão todos morrendo. No lugar há estacionamentos, prédios com varandas gourmet e templos de igrejas pentecostais. Algumas estações de metrô parecem shopping center. Prédios de luxo, como as favelas, são um show de horror à parte. Mesmo que seja um país com tanta desigualdade, pobres e ricos dividem o mau gosto igualmente.

Você ficaria horrorizada com as casas daqui, carentes de jardins, de livros, de pôsteres.

O que não quer dizer que brasileiros não sejam apreciadores de arte. Longe disso. Voltava para o hostel outro dia quando um homem me perguntou se eu gostava de teatro. Depois, em mais duas ocasiões, outros homens me perguntaram a mesma coisa. Achei curioso. Brasileiros devem gostar muito de teatro, e de maracatu e de poesia.

Estou voltando com uma mala só de bugigangas. Paçocas, pedras, Fulecos, araras de ametista, tucanos entalhados em madeira, livros de Jorge Amado, CD da Claudia Leitte - a Beyoncé deles -, biquínis, palavras terminadas em inho e saudade, bastante saudade.

(30% correto, Guy Franco) . Se você nasceu nos EUA, dê uma espiada como estão as coisas por lá, mas esqueça as fachadas.

Bem preparados emocionalmente

 

Luana Barbosa estava na garupa da motocicleta do namorado que, segundo a polícia, não parou no bloqueio;atriz levou um tiro no tórax disparado pelo cabo Marcelo Aparecido Domingos Coelho

A atriz Luana Barbosa, de 25 anos, foi morta nessa sexta-feira, 27, pelo cabo da Polícia Militar, Marcelo Aparecido Domingos Coelho, em uma blitz de trânsito em Presidente Prudente, no oeste paulista. Ela levou um tiro no tórax.

A atriz, que fez aniversário na quinta-feira, estava na garupa da motocicleta do namorado, o músico Felipe Fernandes de Barros, de 29 anos. Ele não parou no bloqueio, segundo a PM. A versão foi desmentida por amigos do músico, garantindo que Barros procurava um lugar para estacionar quando houve o disparo.

Bombeiros socorreram a jovem, que deu entrada no Hospital Regional. Ela não resistiu e morreu pouco depois. O cabo Coelho, de 43 anos, foi preso em flagrante. Ele está no Presídio Romão Gomes, em São Paulo. A arma teria disparado acidentalmente, segundo o cabo, que está há 23 anos na Polícia Militar.

Ouvido pelo Estado, um porta-voz da PM disse que um inquérito foi aberto para apurar o caso em 40 dias. "Pode ser prorrogado por mais 20 dias", afirmou. Ele não soube dizer se o cabo será expulso da corporação.

Atriz e produtora. Além de atriz, Luana Barbosa também era produtora de espetáculos teatrais. Ela era integrante da Federação Prudentina de Teatro e Artes Integrados. A jovem foi enterrada no começo da tarde deste sábado, 28, em Rancharia, onde moram seus pais.

(Arma disparada acidentalmente por um CABO há 23 anos na Policia Militar? )