Portion of Keystone Pipeline Shut Down After 380,000-Gallon Oil Leak in North Dakota
November 2nd, 2019Via: USA Today:
A portion of the Keystone Pipeline in North Dakota was shut down this week after more than 380,000 gallons of oil leaked, the pipeline owner said in a statement.
Meanwhile, environmental groups argue that the spill and the pipeline’s volatility is why the separate Keystone XL pipeline should not be built.
Pipeline owner TC Energy said Thursday that an estimated 9,120 barrels of oil spilled near Edinburg, North Dakota, affecting 22,500 square feet of wetlands about an hour from the Canadian border.
The Race for Quantum Supremacy
November 2nd, 2019Via: Vice:
U.S. Debt Surpasses $23 Trillion for First Time
November 1st, 2019Via: The Hill:
The federal government’s outstanding public debt has surpassed $23 trillion for the first time in history, according to data from the Treasury Department released on Friday.
Growing budget deficits have added to the nation’s debt at a speedy rate since President Trump took office. The debt has grown some 16 percent since Trump’s inauguration, when it stood at $19.9 trillion. It passed $22 trillion for the first time just 10 months ago.
Of the $23 trillion figure, just under $17 trillion was in the category of debt held by the public, which is a more useful gauge of the debt the government has to pay down, and the number typically used in calculating the nation’s debt burden. The other $6 trillion comes from loans within government bodies.
Still, the $23 trillion figure marks a milestone.
“Reaching $23 trillion in debt on Halloween is a scary milestone for our economy and the next generation, but Washington shows no fear,” said Michael A. Peterson, CEO of the fiscally conservative Peter G. Peterson Foundation.
“Piling on debt like this is especially unwise and unnecessary in a strong economy,” he added.
Britain Orders Immediate Moratorium on Fracking Due to Earth Tremor Concerns
November 1st, 2019Via: Reuters:
Britain will impose an immediate moratorium on fracking, the government announced on Saturday, saying the industry risked causing too much disruption to local communities through earth tremors.
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The decision follows a report on an incident at a site run by British energy company Cuadrilla near Blackpool, northern England where a 2.9-magnitude tremor shook houses in August.
Dark Journalist: TSSA CIA Fake UFO Disclosure
November 1st, 2019Via: Dark Journalist:
The Fantasy of Opting Out
November 1st, 2019Via: The MIT Press Reader:
Consider a day in the life of a fairly ordinary person in a large city in a stable, democratically governed country. She is not in prison or institutionalized, nor is she a dissident or an enemy of the state, yet she lives in a condition of permanent and total surveillance unprecedented in its precision and intimacy.
Related: Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind
How Deep Sleep May Help The Brain Clear Alzheimer’s Toxins
November 1st, 2019Via: NPR:
The brain waves generated during deep sleep appear to trigger a cleaning system in the brain that protects it against Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.
Electrical signals known as slow waves appear just before a pulse of fluid washes through the brain, presumably removing toxins associated with Alzheimer’s, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science.
The finding could help explain a puzzling link between sleep and Alzheimer’s, says Laura Lewis, an author of the study and an assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at Boston University.
“Some disruption to the way sleep is working could potentially be contributing to the decline in brain health,” Lewis says.
The finding also suggests that people might be able to reduce their risk of Alzheimer’s by ensuring that they get high-quality sleep, says William Jagust, a professor of public health and neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the study.
The Global Fertility Crash
November 1st, 2019There’s a fascinating interactive chart at the link.
Via: Bloomberg:
At least two children per woman—that’s what’s needed to ensure a stable population from generation to generation. In the 1960s, the fertility rate was five live births per woman. By 2017 it had fallen to 2.43, close to that critical threshold.
Researchers Are Working on Ways to Make Intolerable Memories Bearable
November 1st, 2019Via: National Post:
The 60 souls that signed on for Dr. Alain Brunet’s memory manipulation study were united by something they would rather not remember. The trauma of betrayal.
For some, it was infidelity and for others, a brutal, unanticipated abandonment. “It was like, ‘I’m leaving you. Goodbye,” the McGill University associate professor of psychiatry says.
In cold, clinical terms, his patients were suffering from an “adjustment disorder” due to the termination (not of their choosing) of a romantic relationship. The goal of Brunet and other researchers is to help people like this — the scorned, the betrayed, the traumatized — lose their total recall. To deliberately forget.
Over four to six sessions, volunteers read aloud from a typed script they had composed themselves — a first-person account of their breakup, with as many emotional details as possible — while under the influence of propranolol, a common and inexpensive blood pressure pill. The idea was to purposely reactivate the memory and bring the experience and the stinging emotions it aroused to life again. “How did you feel about that?” they were asked. How do you feel right now? And, most importantly: Has your memory changed since last week?
The investigators had hypothesized that four to six sessions of memory reactivation under propranolol would be sufficient to dramatically blunt the memories associated with their “attachment injury.” Decrease the strength of the memory, Brunet says, and you decrease the strength of the pain.
The study is now complete, and Brunet is hesitant to discuss the results, which have been submitted to a journal for peer review and publication. However, the participants “just couldn’t believe that we could do so much in such a small amount of time,” he confides.
“They were able to turn the page. That’s what they would tell us — ‘I feel like I’ve turned the page. I’m no longer obsessed by this person, or this relationship.’”
Brunet insists he isn’t interested in deleting or scrubbing painful memories out entirely. The idea of memory erasure, of finding the cellular imprint of a specific, discreet memory in the brain, of isolating and inactivating the brain cells behind that memory, unnerves him. ‘It’s not going to come from my lab,” he says, although others are certainly working on it.
Police Owe Nothing To Man Whose Home They Blew Up
October 31st, 2019Via: NPR:
An armed shoplifting suspect in Colorado barricaded himself in a stranger’s suburban Denver home in June 2015. In an attempt to force the suspect out, law enforcement blew up walls with explosives, fired tear gas and drove a military-style armored vehicle through the property’s doors.
After an hours-long siege, the home was left with shredded walls and blown-out windows. In some parts of the interior, the wood framing was exposed amid a mountain of debris.
A federal appeals court in Denver ruled this week that the homeowner, who had no connection to the suspect, isn’t entitled to be compensated, because the police were acting to preserve the safety of the public.
“Under no circumstances in this country should the government be able to blow up your house and render a family homeless,” Leo Lech, the house’s owner, told NPR. “This family was thrown out into the street without any recourse.”
