• Rising temperatures threaten Salt Lake City’s water supply

    In an example of the challenges water-strapped Western cities will face in a warming world, new research shows that every degree Fahrenheit of warming in the Salt Lake City region could mean a 1.8 to 6.5 percent drop in the annual flow of streams that provide water to the city. By midcentury, warming Western temperatures may mean that some of the creeks and streams that help slake Salt Lake City’s thirst will dry up several weeks earlier in the summer and fall.

  • DHS, FDA: Decorative contact lenses for Halloween costumes are risky

    Many will celebrate Halloween today, and federal officials are warning the public about the dangers associated with counterfeit decorative contact lenses. Decorative and colored lenses are becoming increasingly popular, especially around this time of year. Several federal agencies have teamed up to launch Operation Double Vision – already underway — to seize illegal, harmful products from store shelves.

  • Warming will disturb nutrients balance in drylands, affecting food production

    Drylands cover about 41 percent of Earth’s land surface and support more than 38 percent of the world’s population. As the world’s population grows, people will increasingly rely on marginal lands — particularly drylands — for production of food, wood and biofuels. Trouble is, an increase in aridity due to global warming will disturb the balance of nutrients in the soil and reduce productivity of the world’s drylands, a landmark study predicts. Increasing aridity is associated with a reduction in carbon and nitrogen in the soil and an increase in phosphorus.

  • Where should U.S. radioactive waste be buried?

    In the United States, about 70,000 metric tons of spent commercial nuclear fuel are located at more than seventy sites in thirty-five states. Shales and other clay-rich (argillaceous) rocks have never been seriously considered for holding America’s spent nuclear fuel, but it is different overseas. France, Switzerland, and Belgium are planning to put waste in tunnels mined out of shale formations, and Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom are evaluating the idea.

  • Sharp increase in radioactive water leaks at Fukushima

    Tokyo Electric Power(TEPCO) has reported a rise in groundwater radiation levels, saying a tank at the firm’s Fukushima plant leaked 300 metric tons of toxic water in August 2013. Water samples from wells, taken in mid-October, show a record-high concentration of beta-ray emitting substances, and a sharp increase in the presence of radioactive tritium. Japanese prime ministerShinzo Abe, in a tacit admission that Japan cannot effectively handle the continuing radiation leaks from the stricken plant, said Japan would be interested in receiving foreign help to contain widening radioactive water leaks at Fukushima.

  • Burping for power: Tapping cow burps for natural gas

    Scientists in Argentina have developed a method to transform the gas created by cows’ digestive systems into fuel. The technique channels the digestive gases from bovine stomach cavities through a tube and into a tank, where the gases, called eruptos (burps) in Spanish, are processed to separate methane from other gases such as carbon dioxide.

  • More than 500 million people could face increasing water scarcity

    Both freshwater availability for many millions of people and the stability of ecosystems such as the Siberian tundra or Indian grasslands are put at risk by climate change. Even if global warming is limited to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, 500 million people could be subject to increased water scarcity.

  • New apps to keep you healthy

    For those wanting to keep their distance from health threats like E. coli-contaminated lettuce or the flu, there are two upcoming apps for that. The Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) hosted a competition this summer in which graduate students designed two mobile apps to fight the threats of food-related illnesses and the flu. The apps are called FoodFeed and FL•U (pronounced “flu you”).

  • 1930s fight against malaria in U.S. a model for today’s global campaign

    Malaria killed an estimated 1.24 million people worldwide in 2010 and has decimated economies in the heavily populated, warm climate regions. A new study about the elimination of malaria in the 1930s American South may have significant implications for solving modern day malaria outbreaks in parts of Africa, Central and Latin America, and Asia.

  • Small changes in agricultural practices reduce produce-borne illness

    Foodborne illness sickens an estimated 9.4 million and kills around 1,300 annually in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Produce accounts for nearly half the illnesses, and 23 percent of the deaths. Researchers have identified some agricultural management practices in the field that can either boost or reduce the risk of contamination in produce from two major foodborne pathogens: salmonella, the biggest single killer among the foodborne microbes, and Listeria monocytogenes.

  • Physicians feared terrorists might hack Dick Cheney’s cardiac defibrillator

    In a 60 Minutes segment aired yesterday (Sunday), former vice-president Dick Cheney told the interviewer that his doctors turned off the wireless function of his implanted cardiac defibrillator (ICD) “in case a terrorist tried to send his heart a fatal shock.” Asked about the concern of Cheney’s physicians, electrophysiologists — these are the cardiologists who implant ICDs – say that as far as they know, this has never happened in the real world but that it is impossible to rule out the possibility.

  • Iraqi war- and occupation-related death toll estimated at half a million

    A scientific study calculating Iraqi deaths for almost the complete period of the U.S.-led war and subsequent occupation estimates, with 95 percent of statistical certainty, that the total excess Iraqi deaths attributable to the war through mid-2011 to be about 405,000 (“excess” death means death not related to natural causes or causes other than the war and occupation). The researchers also estimated that an additional 56,000 deaths were not counted due to migration. Including this number, their final estimate is that close to half a million people died in Iraq as a result of the war and subsequent occupation from March 2003 to June 2011.

  • Innovative salmonella sensing system

    Foodborne illnesses making one in six Americans — or forty-eight million people — sick each year. Of these people sickened, 128,000 end up in the hospital, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while 3,000 die. A new approach to detecting food contamination enables real-time testing of food and processing plant equipment.

  • One in 2,000 people in the U.K. carry mad cow disease proteins

    Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) is a degenerative brain disease — often called the human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or “mad cow disease.” It emerged after widespread exposure to BSE prions in the late 1980s and early 1990s through contaminated meat products in the food chain. Around one in 2,000 people in the United Kingdom may carry variant CJD proteins, concludes a large scale survey published on BMJ.

  • Compound derived from vegetables offers shield from lethal radiation doses

    Researchers say a compound derived from cruciferous vegetable such as cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli protected rats and mice from lethal doses of radiation. The compound, known as DIM could protect normal tissues in patients receiving radiation therapy for cancer, but could also protect individuals from the lethal consequences of a nuclear disaster.