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The “Cell from Hell” Is Back in North Carolina Estuaries
July 9, 2000 New Bern, North Carolina - In southeastern Europe the past several days, temperatures above 100 degrees in many places - and up to 113 degrees in the Turkey and Romania region - have killed at least 38 people. Strong winds from the Sahara desert began blowing on Friday causing hundreds of fires in Greece, Italy and Croatia. And this is only the first of July. What happens in August and September?
Brown Tide Devastating Long Island’s Great South Bay Shellfish
July 2, 2000 Stony Brook, New York - Biologists in the Marine Sciences Research Center at State University of New York at Stony Brook are puzzled by the vigorous brown tide algal bloom this spring that has killed off most of the shellfish in Long Island's Great South Bay. Part of the problem, in addition to the more traditional link of algal blooms to pesticide and fertilizer runoffs from land, is global warming. Winter 2000 was warmer than normal and Spring 2000 was the warmest spring on record in the United States. But no one expected brown tide algae to persist through the winter and then flourish and spread as far as it has in the Great South Bay.
250 Photographs of Mars Show Signs of Water
June 26, 2000 Boulder, Colorado - Major breaking news this past week was NASA's press conference in Washington, D. C. at NASA Headquarters on Thursday, June 22nd, to announce 250 photographs of widespread areas on Mars that closely resemble gullies and springs of water on earth.
Spring 2000 – Hottest On Record in U. S.
June 18, 2000 Asheville, North Carolina - This weekend, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center announced that this spring of 2000 has been the warmest on record for the United States. NOAA reports that during this spring season, "every state in the continental U. S. was warmer than its long-term average. ... The extremely warm temperatures contributed to worsening drought conditions in many areas of the country. Parts of the Southeast, Midwest and
British Cell Phone Safety Alert and An Interview with Robert O. Becker, M. D.
- Robert O. Becker, M. D., Orthopedic Surgeon
May 14, 2000 London, England - The British government this past week received a medical research recommendation that controls be placed on mobile phone use, especially for all young people under the age of sixteen. Tayside University Hospitals in Scotland reported that in its study of the sort of microwave radiation emitted by cell phones on worms - scientists discovered changes in proteins consistent with cooking of the tissues. The British report said that children in particular are considered to be at risk because their nervous systems are still developing and because the smaller size of a child's skull allows greater absorption into the brain tissue of the low level microwaves emitted by mobile phones. Right now in Britain, one in four mobile phone users is under 18 years of age.
Serious Drought in the Great Lakes
"Foremost is the rapidness with which the water level has dropped three feet over the past two years. On Lakes Michigan and Huron, this is the largest two year drop that we've had in our 140 years of record."
- Frank H. Quinn, Ph.D., May 2000 Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory
May 7, 2000 Ann Arbor, Michigan - Drought has taken hold in the Great Lakes in a severity not seen since the mid 1960s and the 1930s. With water levels in the lakes near record lows, big cargo ships can no longer carry the heavy loads they used to. So far in 2000, the Great Lakes Carriers Association estimates it's having to lighten each trip by about 8,000 tons and the costs are climbing. For example, iron ore and coal are valued at $35/ton per trip. So, every 8,000 pounds left behind to get a cargo ship across the shrinking lake waters is a loss of $300,000 in cargo.
A Dinosaur with A Warm-Blooded Heart
April 30, 2000 Raleigh, North Carolina - There was an astonishing discovery in the Hell's Creek sandstone of northwestern South Dakota back in 1993: a 13 foot long dinosaur with a heart in its rib cage. It's all fossilized, of course, but now modern CT scanning technology has confirmed it's four chambered with one aorta like warm-blooded animals today, not the cold-blooded reptilian metabolism assumed for dinosaurs over the past 150 years.
A Black Hole in the Big Dipper?
April 24, 2000 MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts Ten years ago on April 24, 1990 the Hubble Space Telescope was launched with its imperfect mirror. Later astronauts repaired it. Since then, Hubble has provided some of the most astounding photographs of the universe over the past decade. And recently, Hubble and the Chandra X-Ray telescopes were focused on a spot in the Big Dipper about 6,000 light years from earth to help solve a mystery.
Severe Arctic Ozone Loss and Deep Ocean Warming
April 20, 2000 Greenbelt, Maryland - This winter, NASA and a European Commission sent two NASA research aircraft up to 70,000 feet above northern Sweden to measure gasses in the upper atmosphere. The specific concern was ozone levels. The stratosphere was much colder than normal this winter which makes ozone deterioration worse. And even though satellites and ground instruments monitor the atmosphere, there hadn't been direct measurement by instruments on a high flying plane since 1992. The result? More than 60 percent of the Arctic ozone at 11 miles above the North Polar region had been depleted.