Oily old bugs, The vision is plastics, Mamitu, wind turbines.,Cuddie Springs grinders

Oily old bugs
.."..extends the record of oil formation in source rocks by nearly one billion years," ..Prof Birger Rasmussen U Western Australia.
..bitumen nodules in the Pilbara shales suggests hydrocarbon generation was fairly common in the mid-late Archaean 2.5 to 3 E9 ybp.
..casts doubt on the abiogenic origins of hydrocarbons....
..3.2 E9 ybp.. accumulation of organic matter.enough for the onset of petroleum generation..
..thicknesses of organic rich shale from which these oils were generated."
..similar traces of bitumen in 3 billion year old sandstone in the same region. That

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TLS
Pandora's Breeches Women, science and power in the Enlightenment Patricia Fara
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.."The vision is plastics that coat large areas that provide quite a cheap source.." says Prof Andrew Holmes of the U Melbourne's Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotech
.. a semiconducting polymer by sandwiching a thin polymer between two metal electrodes. As electrons flow through the polymer, it fluoresces, giving out light of different colours..
The paint-on solar panel idea is based on reversing this process.
s..prototype is only a few percent efficient ..Swiss researchers has reached 15%..
Bio21, CRC for Polymers and CSIRO to develop a polymer that is 25% efficient..
Because direct sunlight would easily break down the polymer, Holmes says the best use of the light-absorbing polymer would be on surfaces that are at an angle ..light-emitting polymers, called polyfluorenes.
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.. those suffering fistulas are completely voiceless - young, female, poor, rural and ostracized. They are the 21st century's lepers.
Ms. Mamitu was exceptionally lucky in that she was brought to a hospital here in Addis Ababa that offered free surgery by a saintly husband and wife pair of gynecologists from Australia, Reginald and Catherine Hamlin. Reg is now dead, while Catherine is the Mother Teresa of our time and is long overdue for a Nobel Peace Prize.
After that operation, 42 years ago, Ms. Mamitu was given a job making beds in the hospital. Then she began helping out during surgeries, and after a couple of years of watching she was asked by Dr. Reg Hamlin to cut some stitches. Eventually, Ms. Mamitu was routinely performing the entire fistula repair herself.
Over the decades, Ms. Mamitu has gradually become one of the most experienced fistula surgeons. Gynecologists from around the world go to the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital to train in fistula repair, and typically their teacher is Ms. Mamitu.
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small wind turbines
..ut electricity bills by .. one third and reduce CO2 ..by half a ton/ year.
1.75m diam , bolts on.. like a satellite dish.
..1kw of electricity.. 2.5 metre high......in wind speeds of 3mph
..£1,500 including installation. manufacturer Windsave
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Wind turbines.. some antagonism to them being erected in beautiful Scottish Iles.
Myself, I think they look rather grand, dont amount to destruction.
Wouldnt like to live within earshot, the whooshing is apparently crazy-making.
Gotta be some price to pay for electricity.
David Bellamy is very anti.
Whats important is to keep a clear picture of pollution.
Minor pollution is things like plastic bags and wind turbines. They 'spoil' the pristine look of a place. Major pollution is where land disturbance or chemicals degrade the biosystems in such a way that remediation is near impossible and bio-functions are disabled.
I would include swimming as a biofunction. A few plastic bags in a river are minor pollution, they dont by themselves prevent swimming in or drinking of the water. Their presence, however, is a fairly reliable sign that other, less visible, major pollutants are present. Things like sewage, oil, pesticides, herbicides, are likely to be there along with the visible plastic.
...In the 17th century we had 90,000 windmills in Britain... they say the new turbines kill 0.2 birds per year
birds dead beside windturbine Spain - the caption says removing dead birds. Its not clear that these 3 birds were killed at this spot, beneath this rather small turbine. The Bellamy freaks might be capable of exaggeration... or eagles might be especially vulnerable to these 120m blades...
It does seem a tad gross to erect over 130 in South Lewis, Harris and North Uist National Scenic Area, even tho its mighty windy up there. Some say that tourists wont come to scenic sites blighted by towers. The transmission lines and pylons may be worse.


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30,000 ybp seed grinding stones
Who killed the big beasts in Australia long ago? Some, like Tim Flannery, have said it was people, others such as Judith Field say it was climate..PNAS..
a site at Cuddie Springs in Western New South Wales, where both megafauna bones and the tools of people are found together..

Judith Field: It is really important because the dates from this site, the earliest record of cultural material is at 36,000 and the latest record of megafauna at the site is around about 28,000 to 30,000,,dissolved the bones and analysed them for their rare earth element contents. ..we took four horizons, two from the human or the archaeological levels and two from the pre-human record ..we can now argue that the dates from the sediment and the charcoal associated with the bones are actually contemporary with the bones and are 36,000 years old and 30,000 respectively.
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Robyn Williams: So you are saying, on the basis of this one site, that you think the extinction of the megafauna was not caused by human beings but was caused by something else, presumably climate.
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Robyn Williams: So they could have been living together for 10,000 or 20,000 years.
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Judith Field: Yes, so we’re talking a minimum time range of 15,000 and that’s really important ..there’s absolutely no evidence to connect people to extinction of the megafauna through habitat disruption..
They seemed to have disappeared round about 30,000 years ago and that’s about at the beginning of the last glacial maximum..
..one of the other interesting things about Cuddie Springs is in the 30,000 year horizon: not only do we have a diminished range of species and megafauna, we also have the first appearance of seed grinding stones

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Bad Words
Microsoft Corporation's new China-based web portal get a scolding message each time they input words deemed taboo by the communist authorities - such as democracy, freedom and human rights "Prohibited language in text, please delete," the message says.
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climate fudging - Exonerated?
typical letter:
..official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, ..
In handwritten notes on ..several reports issued in 2002 and 2003.. Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists ,,had already approved.
The dozens of changes..tend to produce an air of doubt ... ..chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality..
.. he was the "climate team leader" ..at the American Petroleum Institute..A lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics, he has no scientific training
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charlie brown
..08 June 2005 Pirates armed with AK-47 assault rifles attacked the crew of a supertanker waiting to load crude at Iraq's Basra oil terminal before making off with cash..

The raid happened at night on 31 May about 10 nautical miles from Iraq's deep-water oil terminal ..
Lieutenant Commander Charlie Brown of the US Navy's Fifth Fleet said the navy was only directly responsible for security at the oil terminals themselves.
..In late April, security was also tightened at ..Umm Qasr after an armed group raided a vessel carrying Australian wheat. The ship was at anchor some distance from the port ..

Charlie, Charlie Charlie Brown
You just ain't fresh anymore
Because I like to be lifted
Your shit grounds me to the floor
Don't make me deck you, Charlie Bitch
Don't come 'round with that
Don't nobody want to hit that
Ya'll bustas need to quit that
Charlie, Charlie