MaxRedline

The Poor Polar Bears

Whoops! They're doing fine.

There are too many polar bears in parts of Nunavut and climate change hasn’t yet affected any of them, says a draft management plan from the territorial government that contradicts much of conventional scientific thinking. The proposed plan — which is to go to public hearings in Iqaluit on Tuesday — says that growing bear numbers are increasingly jeopardizing public safety and it’s time Inuit knowledge drove management policy.

“Inuit believe there are now so many bears that public safety has become a major concern,” says the document, the result of four years of study and public consultation.

“Public safety concerns, combined with the effects of polar bears on other species, suggest that in many Nunavut communities, the polar bear may have exceeded the co-existence threshold.”

In its submission, the Kitikmeot Regional Wildlife Board expresses frustration with how polar bears are used as an icon in the fight against climate change. “This is very frustrating for Inuit to watch … We do not have resources to touch bases with movie actors, singers and songwriters who often narrate and provide these messages,” it says.

An estimated 25,000 to 40,000 polar bears live in the Arctic -- up from just 5,000 a half-century ago. Perhaps unsurprisingly, "scientists" from down south, who don't live with the bears, scoff at the observations by First Nation inhabitants - who actually do live among polar bears. I'll take First Nation observations for $1000, Alex.

 

Cue Up The Twilight Zone Theme Music

The U.S. Army has signed a contract to study and exploit materials from unidentified flying objects. It intends to use what it learns in order to develop new weapons platforms.

The facts are provided in a newly agreed cooperative research and development contract between the U.S. Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command (specifically, the Ground Vehicle Systems Center) and the UFO technology exploitation group To The Stars Academy. The U.S. Army's stamped and signed 26-page contract is quite stunning.

"The government is interested," the contract explains, "in a variety of the collaborator's technologies, such as, but not limited to inertial mass reduction, mechanical/structural metamaterials, electromagnetic metamaterial wave guides, quantum physics, quantum communications, and beamed energy propulsion." The contract also entails the research of metamaterial exploitation for the purposes of "active camouflage and directed photo projection."

In other words, people appear to have been scavenging materials from crashed UFOs and the military wants to determine their usefulness in future weapons systems. Sounds like science fiction, but the Army doesn't issue contracts on a whim.

The government's rationale for the contract is simple. "If the government can verify materiel solutions claims by [To The Stars Academy]," it says, "then significant advancements can be made in the capabilities of Army ground vehicle platforms in terms of security, force protection and weight reduction."

Likely, they're also interested in developing new propulsion systems as well. Anti-gravity, anyone?

 

Going To Court To Contest A Red-Light Camera Ticket?

BEAVERTON, Ore. (KOIN) — After years of late-night research, frustration, ridicule and even lawsuits, Mats Jarlström of Beaverton could finally say, “I told you so.” But he didn’t use those words after learning his research into whether yellow lights are too short for drivers making turns was validated at the highest level. Instead, Jarlström expressed joy. ​

“I feel totally vindicated here,” Jarlström told KOIN 6 while holding back tears after learning the news Thursday, which happened to be his birthday.​

The Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE), which makes the traffic control policies for the United States and other countries, notified Jarlström that he’s right: drivers often get caught in a no man’s land when trying to make a turn and they end up running red lights.​

“This is a tremendous amount of work I put into this and the impact this will have for everyone in the world, it’s going to be dramatic,” said Jarlström. “The yellow lights are too short in the U.S.”​

It took Jarlström 6 years of research (and facing indifferent authorities in Beaverton, Washington County, and the state of Oregon), but he finally prevailed. Most entities responded that they follow best practices determined by ITE. And yesterday, ITE notified him that he was right and they had screwed up:

“The existing Kinematic Equation does not fully cover several dilemma-zone situations for left-turn and right-turn movements,” concluded members of an ITE panel considering Jarlström’s research. “The Panel suggests that this item be properly reconsidered by ITE.”​

This is going to tick off a lot of bureaucrats in cities across the country. They're going to have to recalibrate all of those cameras.

 

The Living Dead

Cairns (Australia) (AFP) - An Australian scientist has proved that human bodies move around significantly for more than a year after death, in findings that could have implications for detectives and pathologists around the world.

After studying and photographing the movements of a corpse over 17-months, Alyson Wilson told AFP on Friday that she found humans don't exactly rest in peace.

In one case study, arms that began held close to the body ended up flung out to the side. Her findings were recently published in the journal "Forensic Science International: Synergy".

Hey - more Democrat voters!

 

Ski Runs, Parking Lots, And Lodges Are A-OK, Though

Scientists warn that Mount Hood, an active volcano outside Portland, Ore., lacks adequate monitoring equipment and bureaucratic red tape has left them blind to detect future eruptions, which could lead to deadly consequences, according to a report. Efforts to install equipment on Mount Hood that would allow scientists to detect the early signs of an eruption have been largely slowed by federal policies designed to help preserve the wilderness, the New York Times reported.

Dr. Seth Moran and his team at the federal Cascades Volcano Observatory submitted a proposal to the Forest Service in 2014, requesting to build three seismometers to measure earthquakes, three GPS instruments to chart ground deformation and one instrument to monitor gas emissions at four different locations on the mountain. Moran’s proposal was initially delayed because it violated the Wilderness Act, which prevents structures and anything that might cause noise pollution from being built in federal wilderness areas. Moran’s plan was finally approved by the Forest Service in August, but his team anticipates further litigation aimed at halting the project.

Mount Hood has not erupted since the 1780s, and Moran warns that leaving the active volcano undetected for this long poses a risk to those who live nearby. There are 161 active volcanos in the United States, many of which line the west coast through California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska in the Cascade Range.

Meh. When Mt. St. Helens blew, Portland got a lot of ash and stuff, but it wasn't really a huge deal. Hood's on the same Cascade line, and about the same distance away. I think the main concern is that if it blows the right way, it could take out a whole lot of east-coast liberals who decided to move here.

 

 

Public Health In Flint, Michigan

The group knew how Legionnaires’ disease, a severe form of pneumonia caused by the waterborne legionella bacteria, operates: once the weather heated up, more people could die. So in May, they met with state health director Nick Lyon to warn him that it was urgent to step up monitoring for Legionnaires’ cases.

And Nick demonstrated his concern:

Wow.

 

Reversatrol

Scientists might be able to reverse the process of ageing, a new study suggests.

Volunteers who were given a cocktail of drugs for a year actually “aged backwards”, losing an average of 2.5 years from their biological ages, according to the new study. The research showed that the marks on their genomes that represent their “epigenetic clock”, as well as their immune systems, actually improved despite the passing of time.

The scientists involved in the study were shocked by the results.

“I’d expected to see slowing down of the clock, but not a reversal,” researcher Steve Horvath from the University of California, Los Angeles told Nature, which first reported the findings. “That felt kind of futuristic.”

This could be a good development - or not so good, if you happen to be serving a life sentence in prison....

 

Live In A City?

Want to know just how badly polluted the air we're breathing is getting? It can be as harmful for your lungs as a pack of cigarettes a day, new research has revealed. The new data might explain why more non-smokers are getting lung problems traditionally associated with smoking.

Researchers found that higher levels of pollutants in city air – ozone in particular – could cause emphysema to progress as quickly as would be expected from smoking an entire pack of cigarettes every day. "Rates of chronic lung disease in this country are going up and increasingly it is recognised that this disease occurs in non-smokers," says physician-epidemiologist Joel Kaufman, from the University of Washington.

Add to that the relatively high rate of smoking seen in many city-dwellers, and they're basically doubling their health risks.

In a ten-year period, just breathing in city air was found to be roughly equivalent to smoking a pack a day for 29 years.

Next thing you know, they'll be prescribing gas-masks for city dwellers, which would really put a crimp in the whole dating scene....

 

NASA Mission Control Has Been Restored

Half a century after the Apollo Missions, the facilities at Johnson Space Center are alive again. Everything looks like it did back when it was active.

Friday’s grand opening — just three weeks shy of the 50th anniversary of humanity’s first otherworldly footsteps — culminates years of work and millions in donations. It opens to the public Monday.

The goal was “to capture the look and feel of July of ’69,” said NASA’s restoration project manager Jim Thornton. “The place is designated a National Historic Landmark,” he said. “It’s not for the brick and mortar of the building, it’s for the amazing feats that happened inside of the building.”

With the International Space Station’s Mission Control running 24/7 one floor down and work for future moonshots going on all around, Thornton said it was challenging to create a museum. But the painstaking work paid off. Some Apollo flight controllers were so moved at seeing the restored room that they teared up.

Seems that Thornton's team did some really good work, there.

 

Skywatching

Jupiter is at its biggest and brightest this month, rising at dusk and remaining visible all night. The solar system's largest planet is a brilliant jewel to the naked eye, but looks fantastic through binoculars or a small telescope, which will allow you to spot the four largest moons, and maybe even glimpse a hint of the banded clouds that encircle the planet.

If you line in the Portland area (or probably anywhere in the Pacific Northwest), however, you won't see it tonight - we're socked in with thick clouds and heavy rain today. Monday should be clear, though, so grab the binoculars and head outside.