| Got Goat's Milk? The Quest to Save Dairy from Climate Change In July 2006, a monthlong triple-digit heat wave scorched California, killing more than 25,000 cattle and reducing dairy production in the region. Land O'Lakes Creameries, which normally produces six million liters of milk daily, was short 1.5 million liters per day. All told, experts estimate that the high temperatures caused $1 billion worth of dairy shortfalls. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Contentious Senate Hearings Begin on Climate Bill Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus said today that he has "serious reservations" about a major global warming bill and warned fellow Democrats to water down the measure in hopes of getting it through the Senate.Speaking at the start of an Environment and Public Works Committee hearing where he is the second highest-ranking member, the Montana Democrat said he wanted to weaken the bill's 2020 target for greenhouse gas emissions -- now 20 percent below 2005 levels. He did not name a specific midterm target for the heat-trapping gases, instead telling reporters he hoped for "some modification." [More] rss.sciam.com |
Calendar: MIND events in January and February JANUARY 8 Most Holocaust survivors spend their lives trying to forget the horrors of the era, but neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel , who fled Austria in 1939 to escape the Nazis, went on to investigate how we remember. His groundbreaking research led to a new understanding of how memories are formed, eventually winning Kandel the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work. Now German filmmaker Petra Seeger has profiled Kandel’s life in an eloquent film called In Search of Memory . [More] rss.sciam.com |
Explosive Silicon Gas Casts Shadow on Solar Power Industry In 2007, outside Bangalore, India, an explosion decapitated an industrial worker, hurling his body through a brick wall. In 2005 a routine procedure at a manufacturing plant in Taiwan caused a spontaneous explosion that killed a worker and ignited a blaze that ripped through the factory, shutting down production for three months. Both incidents shared a common cause--silane, a gas made up of silicon and hydrogen that explodes on contact with air. And both incidents occurred in the same industry--solar power. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Pondering Public Sculpture in Manhattan A few exhibitions around Manhattan this summer afford an opportunity to contemplate what public sculpture should do. nytimes.com |