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UN reports see a lonelier planet with fewer plants, animals
Earth is losing plants, animals and clean water at a dramatic rate, according to four new United Nations scientific reports on biodiversity.
Scientists meeting in Colombia issued four regional reports Friday on how well animal and plants are doing in the Americas; Europe and Central Asia; Africa; and the Asia-Pacific area.
Their conclusion after three years of study : Nowhere is doing well.
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem was about more than just critters, said study team chairman Robert Watson. It is about keeping Earth livable for humans, because we rely on biodiversity for food, clean water and public health, the prominent British and U.S. scientist said.
more
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/report-loss-plants-animals-making-lonelier-planet-53961351
Elon Musk deletes own, SpaceX and Tesla Facebook pages after #deletefacebook
Elon Musk apparently wasn’t aware that his company SpaceX had a Facebook page. The SpaceX and Tesla CEO has responded to a comment on Twitter calling for him to take down the SpaceX, Tesla and Elon Musk official pages in support of the #deletefacebook movement by first acknowledging he didn’t know one existed, and then following up with promises that he would indeed take them down.
He’s done just that, as the SpaceX Facebook page is now gone, after having been live earlier today.
more
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/23/elon-musk-deletes-own-spacex-and-tesla-facebook-pages-after-deletefacebook/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook
Friday TOON Roundup 3 - The Rest
Mueller
Lawyer
State
Carson
DeVos
Penn
The Issue
Terrorist
Katsuko Saruhashi turned radioactive fallout into a scientific legacy
Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the geochemist who would have turned 98 years old today
By Rachel Becker
Today’s Google Doodle celebrates Japanese geochemist Katsuko Saruhashi, whose research helped reveal the insidious spread of radioactive fallout from the US nuclear testing ground in the Pacific. If she were still alive, today would have been her 98th birthday.
In 1957, Saruhashi became the first woman to receive a PhD in chemistry in Japan. Her work focused on measuring the molecules in seawater, like carbon dioxide, oxygen, and also radioactive molecules like cesium-137. Just 12 years before she received her PhD, the United States dropped atomic bombs that devastated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the US continued to unleash a torrent of radioactive fallout in the Pacific as it tested bigger and bigger bombs. By 1958, the US had exploded 67 nuclear devices around the Marshall Islands — leaving a long legacy of contamination behind.
Saruhashi worked at the Central Meteorological Observatory in Tokyo to develop more sensitive methods of measuring radioactive fallout. It was a challenging task, says Toshihiro Higuchi, a historian at Georgetown University and expert on Cold War science. “The amount of fallout that we are talking about is really tiny, and then we are talking about the vast ocean,” he says.
Saruhashi and her colleagues discovered that fallout didn’t disperse evenly in the ocean. The concentrations of radioactive cesium near Japan, for example, were much higher than the concentrations along the West Coast of the US. The team proposed that the high levels were because Japan is downstream of the Pacific nuclear testing ground. But others suspected that the measurements might be off, Higuchi says. “There was a controversy over her argument that the radioactive fallout in seawater was more than what they used to think.”
more
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/22/17150728/katsuko-saruhashi-98th-birthday-google-doodle-radioactive-fallout
Thursday Toon Roundup 3 - The Rest
Putin
Bots
Sessions
Drugs
Pence
Carson
GOP
FBI
The Issue
Coal
Infrastructure
Self-driving cars
Another day
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