| Can Oil Companies Accurately Measure Greenhouse Gas Emissions? Major oil companies are urging the White House to ensure that U.S. EPA's upcoming greenhouse gas reporting rules do not include what the industry considers burdensome requirements or force disclosure of proprietary information.Representatives of the American Petroleum Institute and several large companies -- BP America, Exxon Mobil Corp., Shell Oil Co. and Chevron Corp. -- met with Office of Management and Budget and EPA officials last Tuesday. [More] rss.sciam.com |
What is the Real Cost of Power Production? Market prices don't reflect hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden costs of energy production to human health and the environment, a National Research Council panel said in a report released today."There are many external effects of energy production and use," said Jared Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon University and chairman of the panel that wrote the report. "These are important because they can lead to distortions in decision making." [More] rss.sciam.com |
How Asteroids Built the Continents (preview) Roiling, incandescent magma and boiling gases covered the earth in the wake of its formation 4.6 billion years ago. Regions of this fiery sea eventually cooled enough to crust over, leaving the planet’s first hard rocks floating like slag on the white-hot liquid. But they were nothing more than a thin veneer. The thick roots of terra firma were much longer in the making.Exactly how--and how quickly--continents arose and grew is a matter of ongoing debate. Scientific wisdom long held that the earth’s inner workings alone drove continent formation. But recent findings have turned the spotlight toward a once heretical idea: that large asteroid impacts played a constructive role as well. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Expert Systems Fight Poverty In his wonderful new book The Checklist Manifesto (Metropolitan Books, 2009), surgeon and author Atul Gawande explains how successful surgery depends on the complex interactions of surgeons, nurses, anesthetists and other specialists, who must possess not only highly specialized skills but also the ability to work as a team in the face of rapidly arising challenges. The same applies to an airliner’s pilot, co-pilot and crew. Special tools such as checklists, decision trees and artificial intelligence built into instrumentation are key.Information technology empowers complex group processes in striking new ways, but the breakthroughs are especially exciting in very low income settings. There mobile telephony and wireless broadband are ending the grinding isolation of rural communities and enabling workers--even those with fairly rudimentary training--to interconnect more successfully and to tap into expert systems and artificial intelligence. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Pool Party Concerts in Brooklyn Park Reinstated Pool Parties, the rock concerts at East River State Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, are reinstated for this summer. nytimes.com |