August 11, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Hours before sunrise, a crowd numbering in the hundreds had already begun gathering outside the Inglewood Forum, in hopes of being able to take advantage of a free health check-up offered by the Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corps (RAM). RAM will be hosting the free health clinic from 5:30 am to 6 pm over 8 days, in hopes of bringing much needed routine medical care to the urban uninsured excluded from the healthcare system due to cost.
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August 7, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The great Coral Triangle, a region of coral-dense seas demarcated by Malaysia, Indonesia, Timor L’Este, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and the Philippines, is said to be 10 times as biodiverse as Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. 76% of all known species of coral are found in the Coral Triangle, and warming ocean temperatures are causing advanced coral bleaching and endangering the entire regional ecosystem.
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August 5, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Now, we face unprecedented challenges to the right of people everywhere to access information intended for public consumption. Repressive governments are building state-of-the-art censorship , tracking and filtering mechanisms (the ‘Great Firewall of China’, for example), and internet service providers (ISP) are seeking to establish profit-dr… that limit users’ access to certain websites or content-producers.
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July 28, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Amazon Kindle DX is a beautiful device. Its design is user-friendly, intuitive and cohesive. It is clean-edged, minimal and thinner than many major magazines. Its format size is comfortable and makes tactile sense; it feels like something you hold in order to read, giving it a useful aesthetic kinship to books or magazines, a vast improvement on smaller e-reading devices. It is, in point of fact, far more comfortable than planting yourself in front of a computer monitor to read large amounts of text.
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July 28, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
DNA is an amazingly efficient memory bank for the design and scheduling of biological development. Cell DNA have their own replication systems, but human scientists who want to interfere with the content of the genome have been working to find ways to achieve artificial replication and synthesis of disparate properties, and now they may have achieved a landmark breakthrough.
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July 28, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Researchers have stumbled upon a surprise possible treatment for swelling of nerves in the spinal cord. It turns out that FD&C blue dye No. 1 bears certain key similarities to a compound used to treat nerve inflammation. Since there is no active immediate treatment for spinal cord injuries, and secondary inflammation often leads to long-term damage, this treatment holds great promise. The one side-effect observed: the rats’ skin turned blue.
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July 27, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The Financial Times is the latest publication to weigh in on mounting expectations that Apple will release a touchscreen tablet computer this fall. There are rumors the computer maker is hoping to counter the rise of cheap netbooks with something lower-cost than their standard Macs and with a larger screen based on the model of the iPod Touch and the iPhone. The news could mean a breakthrough in personal computing standards and even portability of the workplace.
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July 23, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Access to the internet must be a basic human right, across the globe, for a number of reasons. First of all, legitimate, transparent democratic processes of government require in today’s world that information flow freely and that citizens be empowered to share information and to find information, according to their choices and their needs.
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July 22, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
Preventive use of antibiotics has one salient effect: it speeds the evolution of targeted bacteria, allowing them to develop pervasive resistance to known treatments. In short, preventive administration of antibiotics makes diseases far more dangerous. The US government is now seeking to end the practice of administering antibiotics to livestock, which health officials believe is putting human health at risk.
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July 21, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Pres. Barack Obama has proposed a national high-speed rail program that would develop eight to ten regions for high-speed rail (currently, only the so-called northeast corridor, running from Washington, DC, to Boston, through Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, has a regular high-speed service), as part of a phased-in long-term economic recovery plan. The rail project comes into play also as part of Obama’s plans for a comprehensive energy-sector overhaul, aimed at reducing carbon emissions.
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July 20, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
The US space agency NASA’s Apollo 11 mission was the first to land a human being on the surface of the Moon, on 20 July 1969. The lunar module, known as Eagle, landed astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the surface of the Moon. They spent one day there, and both stepped outside the lander to explore the otherworldly environment.
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July 20, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
This is what the debate in Congress is all about: Whether we’ll keep talking and tinkering and letting this problem fester as more families and businesses go under, and more Americans lose their coverage. Or whether we’ll seize this opportunity – one we might not have again for generations – and finally pass health insurance reform this year, in 2009.
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July 19, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Carbon offsets allow the use of carbon-emitting processes to help fund and develop clean alternatives, which can then compete with and possibly replace the offending carbon-emitters. But there are also ways in which carbon offsetting can be used to combat poverty around the world. If offsets are focused on reducing bad habits, resulting from those engaging in those habits having either no alternative or no training to find alternatives, people living in the poorest conditions can find themselves benefitting from the clean energy revolution.
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July 16, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
The influenza A/H1N1 virus, popularly known as “swine flu” was officially declared a pandemic in June. Shortly after the pandemic declaration, it was confirmed that H1N1 was confirmed in human patients in 74 countries. In the 5 weeks since then, it has spread rapidly and is now confirmed to have caused human infection in 140 countries.
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July 15, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 5 Comments
Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), has told the Guardian newspaper’s Aida Edemariam that swine flu, the A/H1N1 multiple-reassorted virus strain, could be “the biggest” pandemic ever seen, in terms of its spread to so many countries around the world, though that doesn’t mean it will be the most deadly.
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July 15, 2009 :: staff :: 3 Comments
The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a report finding that the pandemic spread of the influenza A/H1N1 virus, known as “swine flu”, is now “unstoppable”. The WHO is calling on governments to speed efforts to develop a vaccine and select which segments of their populations will be given priority, based on public health considerations, after health workers.
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July 15, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
A variety of desert rhubarb, indigenous to the deserts of Israel and Jordan, is the world’s first identified “self-irrigating” plant. The broad green leaves of the plant are unique in the harsh arid climate, and have been found to benefit from a system of water distribution which speeds rainwater down into the soil, toward the roots of the plant, by way of channels along the exterior of the leaves’ veins, lubricated by a substance that keeps the rainwater moving.
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July 14, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
The New Scientist magazine is reporting on an intriguing and brazen new Pentagon program that would create living “OrthopterNets”, communication networks made of insects implanted with special technologies to modulate their wingbeats. Crickets, cicadas and katydids, all use their wings to generate sounds, the patterns of which communicate information to others of their kind. The Pentagon wants to use this natural communications network to prompt the insects to emit specific sounds in the presence of specific chemicals.
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July 14, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
What methods and strategies can be developed for speeding MRSA-effective Manuka honey to production and distribution for clinical treatment? What similar discoveries hold promise for treating multi-resistant bacteria?
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July 13, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: One Comment
Dr. Regina Benjamin, a winner of the MacArthur Foundation “Genius grant”, and a committed rural doctor who has served the poor in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, spending her own money to provide care for those who could not afford it, has been named by Pres. Obama to serve as surgeon general of the United States. Her nomination was announced in a live event at the White House, with Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius in attendance.
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July 12, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
Honey is a surprisingly complex and mysterious substance, known to have antibacterial properties, but which continues to reveal new qualities apparently favorable to human health. Now, scientists in Australia have discovered that a specific type of honey, is highly effective at killing the multi-resistant “superbug” MRSA. The discovery could give medical science a way to combat the spread of multi-resistant bacterial strains.
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July 8, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
The Hot Spring Network has opened a discussion, in collaboration with Café Sentido, on the need to diversify the global wheat crop in order to prevent an evolved crop fungus, Ug99, from destroying as much as 80% of the global wheat harvest.
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July 2, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: Comments Off
Over the weekend, the nationwide media in the US were overtaken by a firestorm of speculation that Michael Jackson’s premature and sudden death, at the age of 50, was the result of a deadly cocktail of powerful painkillers and anti-depressants. Family and friends have complained of a close entourage of “enablers”, helping to intensify a long-running addiction and lead the pop star to his demise. One is tempted to ask, however: where were the doctors?
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June 29, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Swiss-based Solar Impulse unveiled this month the first ever 100% solar-powered airplane with global reach. The HB-SIA is the culmination of six years of daring research and hard work. The aim of Solar Impulse is to demonstrate the ability of solar power to enable a plane to fly around the world with no combustible fuel.
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June 27, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
One of the main objections made by those who criticize efforts to control carbon emissions is that “carbon dioxide is not an atmospheric pollutant”. This line of reasoning tends to argue that emissions-induced global climate destabilization is an elaborate anti-corporate hoax aimed at creating a one-world socialist government. The problem is that this line of reasoning conveniently, or unknowingly, ignores altogether the crises that emerge not from essential contaminants but from substances crossing a threshold, a tipping point.
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June 23, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 8 Comments
As Iran’s presidential election has morphed into a massive international spectacle, with opposition protesters demanding justice and a full accounting of how votes were tallied, the regime has used every technological advantage at its disposal to obstruct online communications and mobile phone traffic. The government now has a wealth of powerful technologies, from western firms, it can use to spy, block communications, and even alter messages before they are delivered.
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June 22, 2009 :: staff :: 3 Comments
In what is described as “the strongest language” ever to emerge from the White House on climate change, a new 190-page report warns that climate destabilization is happening now, around the world, and beginning to impact every level of the economy and of living standards.
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June 21, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
As concerned people inside and outside Iran try to get a grip on what is taking place in the anti-government demonstrations, pro-democracy rallies and security crackdown, following the presidential vote of 12 June 2009, social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have been useful to those trying to get word out about abuses and harsh security measures; the use of proxy servers has allowed journalists, activists and concerned citizens, to circumvent controls on media freedom.
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June 19, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
The Hot Spring Network has launched a video-embed service, and allows you to upload video to our video library. We also embed video in your blog posts, discussion threads and profiles. Search for video across the Hot Spring Network, or add your own.
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June 16, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
A coalition of German firms has answered a call to study making an investment of 400 billion € in solar energy across North Africa. The plan, initiated by the Club of Rome, which has been promoting sustainable development and sustainable economic growth practices, since 1972.
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June 12, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The first broadcast electronic television signal was established in the UK in 1936. The first experimental black-and-white “mechanical” television service was established in the UK in 1926. Several countries, including Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands, had adopted sustained mechanical television services as early as 1932. The United States began selling television receivers in 1938. Today, 12 June 2009, all analog television signals across the US “go dark”.
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June 11, 2009 :: Severino Villalonso :: 4 Comments
The new multi-reassorted strain of flu, Influenza A H1N1, also called “swine flu”, has been officially declared a global pandemic, with over 28,000 confirmed cases of infection across 74 nations. The classification is a geographical judgment, referring to the flu strain’s spread on multiple continents, but does not related to severity. Officials said the pandemic appears to be of moderate severity.
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June 11, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
The “public option” for healthcare reform is about competition. With that competitive edge —no profit motive—, such an insurance plan could reduce costs across the board, for all who seek coverage. This raises the question of whether a new paradigm might be private not-for-profit insurers, possibly organized through doctors’ associations and hospitals, which seek to establish a more reliable payment structure, under a larger-pool of coverage.
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June 10, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
How can we reach the state of affairs in which online activity is entirely secure against identity theft? Hyper-convergence means media and services of all kinds will be increasingly integrated across a broad-spectrum multi-media fabric, where one’s actions and interests, private information and financial data, will be increasingly widespread.
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June 9, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
What mechanisms would do best for ensuring that an open network of institutional transparency could provide stability and sustainability in high-end financial risk-taking? — Join the discussion at TheHotSpring.net…
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June 2, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
This issue, health care reform, is not a luxury. It’s not something that I want to do because of campaign promises or politics. This is a necessity. This is something that has to be done. We cannot avoid bringing about change in our health care system. Soaring health care costs are unsustainable for families, they are unsustainable for businesses, and they are unsustainable for governments, both at the federal, state and local levels.
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June 2, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
The Urban Institute found that 22,000 people died in 2006, in the United States, specifically from lack of health insurance. Other projections, which count the accumulation of long-term pathologies, compounded ill health or medical “error” involving staff calculations about the wisdom of providing the most costly care to those who can’t pay, run into the hundreds of thousands.
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May 31, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Publishing models determine which texts are made available to a wide audience, and by what means. New media, like this social network, are providing new opportunities, but the crossover between print and digital media will provide bold new opportunities for making the best new ideas available to the people who can do the most with them.
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May 31, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
What can we do to impede the erosion of some of our most prized social-intellectual habits of mind, rooted in organic brain structure and in social networking (from campfire to empire, parliament to newsprint, to Twitter and The Hot Spring Network), while taking advantage of the power of the web?
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May 24, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
The influenza A H1N1 virus outbreak of this spring is alleged to have surfaced in a little town in rural Mexico called La Gloria, which happens to be next to one of the world’s most massive industrial scale pig farms. While humans cannot contract the virus by eating pork, the dire conditions and poor sanitation [...]
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May 18, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
TheHotSpring.net :: John Kanzius discovered, through his experience with radio technology, that the use of metal nano particles could allow a targeted way to attack cancer cells and weaken or kill a tumor. The technology came to be known as Kanzius RF therapy, and remains experimental. It uses nano-scale particles of gold or carbon, which [...]
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May 11, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
The NASA Space Shuttle Atlantis took off this afternoon at 2:01 EDT, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. The mission —STS-125— will be the last scheduled mission to service the 19-year-old Hubble Space Telescope, in an effort to extend its working life at least 5 more years into the future. It will entail at least 5 planned spacewalks to repair and upgrade the telescope’s equipment and power-sourcing.
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May 11, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
The US system of healthcare is fundamentally broken. Nearly 50 million people have no coverage at all. Add to that the 13 million undocumented immigrants who are unable to buy healthcare or qualify for government programs, and we have over 60 million inhabitants of the US with zero access to affordable healthcare. Every single uninsured inhabitant of the US pushes costs up, as the system has to absorb unpayable emergency healthcare costs for those individuals. So, for practical reasons as well as moral, we need to take seriouly that every person has a right to medical treatment.
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May 8, 2009 :: Evelyn Winston Perez :: 2 Comments
The World Health Organization has found that 1,500 women are dying every day across Africa from pregnancy-related complications or during childbirth. The figure has not improved over the last decade, largely due to the lack of adequate medical facilities. An extremely high rate of maternal mortality, as many as 1,000 per 100,000 live births (fully 1% of women giving birth), makes the situation an extreme threat to women’s health.
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May 8, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: Comments Off
The tiny surface of the first effective ‘invisibility cloak’ allows light to bend around it in such a way that the optical density of an object underneath it is altered, generating the illusion of invisibility. There are ongoing efforts to build computerized overlays or built-in cladding that would allow even large vehicles like military tanks to appear invisible at a distance.
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May 6, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Amazon.com’s Kindle and Kindle 2 devices have revolutionized the market for electronic books. Wireless devices allowing download of new books in just minutes, for reading on a high-resolution e-paper screen, which reads much like real paper, they have made the experience of hosting and paging through e-books much more user-friendly. Now, Amazon has introduced the Amazon Kindle DX, which will ship this summer, with a screen 2.5 times larger, to make it possible to read magazines or PDF documents as designed.
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May 4, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
Yi Guan —who gained worldwide fame as a virologist when he isolated the SARS virus in the masked palm civet, in specimens being sold at a feral animal market in Guangdong province, China— says the World Health Organization (WHO) was slow in responding to the outbreak of influenza A H1N1, otherwise known as swine flu. Yi has devoted most of his career to flu virology and has a doctorate in swine flu virology.
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May 4, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
The US-based Science Channel will be showing the last mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope live. The mission is the last of its kind in a prolonged service regime planned for the telescope, after a global campaign to prevent the project’s premature cancellation. The Hubble Space Telescope is the single most successful technical instrument in terms of producing new discoveries from probing the distant universe.
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May 4, 2009 :: Webb Tisch :: One Comment
The outbreak of a new strain of flu, influenza A H1N1, in April 2009, has set the gears of global public health policy in motion, with aggressive quarantine efforts in Hong Kong, a blanket culling of pigs in Egypt (despite zero human or swine cases), and a ‘Phase 5′ warning from the World Health Organization that the outbreak constituted an imminent pandemic threat. But now there are hints the H1N1 outbreak may be largely contained in North America.
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May 3, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 4 Comments
The Egyptian government has ordered a 100% blanket cull of its entire pig stock in response to the outbreak of “swine flu” in Mexico and the US. The problem is, the new strain of the virus, technically influenza A H1N1, has not been found in pigs. The H1N1 strain is a flu virus that affects the human population and is spread by person to person contact. It contains genetic material showing it is a hybrid flu containing genetic segments linking it to avian-borne, swine-borne and human-borne flu viruses.
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