Researchers develop rapid method to measure carbon footprints

ScienceDaily (Sep. 13, 2012) ? Researchers have developed new software that can rapidly calculate the carbon footprints of thousands of products simultaneously, a process that up to now has been time consuming and expensive. The methodology should help companies to accurately label products, and to design ways to reduce their environmental impacts, said Christoph Meinrenken, the project's leader and associate research scientist at Columbia University's Earth Institute and Columbia Engineering. A new study, published online in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, describes the methodology.

The project is the result of a collaboration between the institute's Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy and PepsiCo, Inc. Its original aim was to evaluate and help standardize PepsiCo's calculations ofthe amount of carbon dioxide emitted when a product is made, packaged, distributed and disposed of. Started in 2007, it resulted in the first U.S. carbon footprint label certified by an impartial third party, for Tropicana orange juice. PepsiCo has been pilot-testing the methodology for other uses since 2011.

Meinrenken and his team used a life-cycle-analysis database--a tool used to assess the environmental impact of a product--that covered 1,137 PepsiCo products. They then developed three new techniques that work together, enabling them to calculate thousands of footprints within minutes, with minimal user input. The key component was a model that generates estimated emission factors for materials, eliminating manual mapping of a product's ingredients and packaging materials. Meinrenken said the automatically generated factors enable non-experts "to calculate approximate carbon footprints and alleviate resource constraints for companies embarking on large-scale product carbon footprinting." He said the software complies with guidelines sponsored by the nonprofit World Resources Institute, which provides standards against which carbon footprints can be audited.

Up until now, life-cycle-analysis has mostly been performed one product at a time. This imposes large requirements for personnel, expertise, and time, and few companies have enough employees with specialized expertise. Meinrenken said that some have tried to overcome this bottleneck by reverting to aggregate data and calculations, but they usually miss out on the microscopic level of detail that a proper analysis requires.

The researchers' approach was inspired by fields outside environmental science, Meinrenken said. "At companies like Facebook or Netflix, engineers employ statistical wizardry to mine vast datasets and essentially teach computers to predict, for instance, who will like a particular movie," he said. He used similar methods to mine detailed product and supply chain data. "For an environmental engineer, using such data to estimate how much the environment will 'like' certain products and services is especially rewarding," he said. "Consumers will be able to make more informed choices." The information can also help companies design and assess ways to lessen products' impacts, he said.

Al Halvorsen, senior director of sustainability at PepsiCo, said, "The newly developed software promises to not only save time and money for companies like PepsiCo, but also to provide fresh insights into how companies measure, manage, and reduce their carbon footprint in the future."

Klaus Lackner, director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, said, "Fast carbon footprinting is a great example of how academic methodologies [coupled] with modern data processing and statistical tools can be brought to life and unlock their power in the real world." Meinrenken's team is now looking at transferring the methodology from carbon to other arenas, such as water use.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by The Earth Institute at Columbia University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Christoph J. Meinrenken, Scott M. Kaufman, Siddharth Ramesh, Klaus S. Lackner. Fast Carbon Footprinting for Large Product Portfolios. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2012; DOI: 10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012.00463.x

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/2yazD27foBo/120913151132.htm

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30 Rock Becomes The Latest Example To ?Go Google?

The "Go Google" campaign is aimed at companies who want to adopt collaborative software on the cloud in their work environments. Basically, to get away from installing software like Microsoft Word and the like. There have been a few fun videos to demo the capabilities of collaborative Google Apps, but this one is pretty darn good. It uses the show "30 Rock" as an example, and it certainly makes a case for "Going Google":

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/HCm8EDhnHLg/

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Syria rebel: Sunni jihadists after Shiite hostages

Syrian rebel commander Abu Ibrahim, whose real name is Ammar al-Dadikhli, pauses during an interview with the Associated Press at Bab Al-Salameh border crossing, near the Syrian town of Azaz, Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012. Ibrahim, who is holding 10 Lebanese Shiites hostage, said Thursday he is willing to release the men but fears it could provoke attacks by Sunni extremists who would disagree with his decision. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)

Syrian rebel commander Abu Ibrahim, whose real name is Ammar al-Dadikhli, pauses during an interview with the Associated Press at Bab Al-Salameh border crossing, near the Syrian town of Azaz, Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012. Ibrahim, who is holding 10 Lebanese Shiites hostage, said Thursday he is willing to release the men but fears it could provoke attacks by Sunni extremists who would disagree with his decision. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)

Syrian rebel commander Abu Ibrahim, whose real name is Ammar al-Dadikhli, gestures during an interview with The Associated Press at Bab Al-Salameh border crossing, near the Syrian town of Azaz, Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012. Ibrahim, who is holding 10 Lebanese Shiites hostage, said Thursday he is willing to release the men but fears it could provoke attacks by Sunni extremists who would disagree with his decision. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)

AZAZ, Syria (AP) ? A Syrian rebel commander holding 10 Lebanese Shiites hostage said Thursday he is willing to release the men but fears doing so could set off a wave of reprisal attacks by Sunni extremists.

What began as an effort to force Lebanon's Shiite militant group Hezbollah to stop supporting the Syrian regime has become the latest flashpoint in a conflict with growing sectarian overtones.

The rebel leader behind the kidnappings, Ammar al-Dadikhli, is a burly former cross-border trader who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Ibrahim. His 1,200-strong Northern Storm Brigade controls the vital crossing from Syria's Aleppo province into neighboring Turkey, and in May he ordered the seizure of the Lebanese Shiites, who had been on a bus tour of religious sites in the area, on the grounds they belonged to Hezbollah.

He said the kidnappings were aimed at persuading Hezbollah, a strident backer of President Bashar Assad, to reconsider its commitment to the Syrian regime. Instead it set off a string of revenge kidnappings by Shiite clansmen inside Lebanon, with two Turks and some 20 Syrians being snatched by gunmen. All but four of the Syrians have since been released, with the last Turk freed Thursday night.

The stakes are high. If anything were to happen to the Lebanese hostages, who by all accounts have been well treated, it would ignite Shiite rage and set fire to Lebanon's already delicate sectarian balance.

On Aug. 24, Abu Ibrahim moved to defuse the situation by releasing one of the hostages, 60-year-old Hussein Omar, to the Turkish authorities.

Omar told media outlets he had been well treated, but the expected release of the 10 others failed to materialize. Abu Ibrahim said Thursday he is holding on to the others for their own safety.

"After (Omar's) release, the Northern Storm brigade began to receive threats from Sunni extremist groups in Lebanon, Iraq and some in Syria," Abu Ibrahim told The Associated Press in an interview at a customs house in this Syrian border town.

"They told us, the hostages are members of Hezbollah and should be killed."

Though both broadly share anti-U.S. attitudes, militant Shiite and Sunni groups have been rivals in the region for decades. Sunni hard-liners consider Shiites to be heretics, while Shiites complain of centuries of oppression at the hands of their rival Muslim sect.

In Syria, Sunni jihadists appear to want to impose their vision of a sectarian conflict on the uprising, which started with largely secular calls for change against an authoritarian regime and has morphed into a civil war. The extremists ? whose role in the conflict appears to be on the rise ? point out that the regime is dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, with close ties to Iran.

Abu Ibrahim said he fears his men will be attacked by Sunni extremists if he releases the Lebanese Shiites and that the hostages will also be targeted.

"We would like to make a deal and turn them over to one of the great powers, like the United States, to protect ourselves and them, so those extremists won't harm them," he said. "If they are handed back to Lebanon, they will be targeted, but if they are given to a big country, it will be like an international deal."

Despite condemning the regime's use of heavy weapons against civilians and providing some humanitarian aid to the rebels, Western powers have steered clear of any direct intervention into the 18-month old conflict that activists say has claimed more than 20,000 lives.

It is also doubtful that the United States, already reeling from a series of attacks on its embassies in the Middle East prompted by an anti-Islam film, would be looking to get involved in a hostage exchange.

Already the Syrian conflict has had a number of spillover effects in Lebanon, including riots and gun battles between supporters and opponents of Assad's regime, and now the wave of kidnappings.

In contrast to its normally aggressive response to most provocations, however, Hezbollah, which is also deeply involved in Lebanon's tortuous politics, has tried to downplay the Syrian hostage-taking.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah appealed for calm in the wake of the 11 men's capture and uncharacteristically deferred to the Lebanese government to handle negotiations for their release. He also denied any involvement in the retaliatory kidnappings by Shiite clans.

According to Abu Ibrahim, however, extremist Sunni groups appear to be going in the opposite direction.

While the majority of Syria's rebels are Sunni and many are religious, most say they disagree with the extreme approach adopted by Sunni jihadists that often involves singling out Syria's many minorities and the imposition of Islamic law.

"We don't like the Salafis or extremists," said Abu Ibrahim, adding that he had little dealings with them, but had yet to come into direct conflict.

"They are only playing a small role in the revolution," he said, estimating that they made up less than 10 percent of the fighters.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-09-13-Syria-Lebanese%20Hostages/id-e2f5a91e5d3e48cc898b624cddd2f39d

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Engadget Mobile Podcast 152 - 09.12.2012

Myriam may have been running around naked under the stars enjoyed a lengthy stay off the grid, but that doesn't mean she was out of the loop: with Brad, she catches up on the news, and then some. With almost all the major providers of hardware and mobile data unleashing a flood of new facts, this is an Engadget Mobile Podcast in standard two-hour format, but with double the usual density. You want in on that, don't you?

Hosts: Myriam Joire (tnkgrl), Brad Molen
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Music: Tycho - Coastal Brake (Ghostly International)

00:02:56 - Nokia Lumia 920 hands-on: the dual-core, HD Windows Phone 8 flagship to take on the beasts
00:13:00 - Lumia 920 PureView trailer was filmed with a different camera, Nokia apologizes for the confusion
00:32:00 - Nokia and Motorola event roundup
00:33:19 - Nokia announces Lumia 820, a 4.3-inch, LTE-running, budget-friendly Windows Phone 8 handset
00:35:20 - Nokia announces wireless charging pads, Fatboy Recharging Pillow for Lumia phones
00:38:35 - Motorola's new Droid range: Meet the Family
00:39:00 - Motorola Droid RAZR M hands-on (video)
00:43:30 - Motorola Droid RAZR Maxx HD hands-on: bigger battery, beautiful display, Jelly Bean onboard
00:50:15 - Intuition by LG hands-on: a pen-enabled competitor to the Galaxy Note for Verizon (video)
00:58:00 - Samsung Galaxy Note II: hands-on with the new S Pen-toting phablet (video)
01:06:45 - WSJ: 2012 iPhone to support global 4G LTE
01:33:58 - AT&T announces budget-friendly LG Escape, available September 16th for $50
01:36:40 - Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G bringing keyboard, longwinded name to T-Mobile September 19th
01:39:50 - Sprint announces 100-city LTE expansion in 'coming months,' adds New York, Chicago and LA to the list
01:43:48 - T-Mobile coaxing unlocked iPhone users to its network with Value Plan push, aggressive in-store service
01:50:40 - Amazon announces $119 Kindle Paperwhite with illuminated, capacitive touch display
01:53:40 - Amazon's new Kindle line-up now available for pre-order

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Filed under: Podcasts, Mobile

Engadget Mobile Podcast 152 - 09.12.2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Sep 2012 06:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/12/engadget-mobile-podcast-152-09-12-2012/

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PR Jobs: Soda Pop PR, Nuance Communications, HarperCollins ...

Get hands-on training and interact with social media professionals to build your online brand using Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn at our online conference and workshop, Social Media 101. Speakers include Lauren Dugan (AllTwitter), Erica Swallow (Contently), and Emily Stivers (KO13 Consulting). Sign up now before registration ends.

Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/pr-jobs-soda-pop-pr-nuance-communications-harpercollins_b44844

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Whooping cough vaccine loses punch too fast

NEW YORK (AP) ? As the U.S. wrestles with its biggest whooping cough outbreak in decades, researchers appear to have zeroed in on the main cause: The safer vaccine that was introduced in the 1990s loses effectiveness much faster than previously thought.

A study published in Wednesday's New England Journal of Medicine found that the protective effect weakens dramatically soon after a youngster gets the last of the five recommended shots around age 6.

The protection rate falls from about 95 percent to 71 percent within five years, said researchers at the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Research Center in Oakland, Calif.

The U.S. has had more than 26,000 whooping cough cases so far this year, including more than 10,000 in children ages 7 to 10.

"The substantial majority of the cases are explained by this waning immunity," said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious-disease specialist at Vanderbilt University.

In light of the findings and earlier, similar research, health officials are considering recommending another booster shot for children, strengthening the vaccine or devising a brand new one.

But "there's nothing in the pipeline that's close," said Dr. Tom Clark of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Whooping cough, or pertussis, is a highly contagious bacterial disease that can strike people of any age but is most dangerous to children. Its name comes from the sound youngsters make as they gasp for breath.

It used to be common, causing hundreds of thousands of illnesses annually and thousands of deaths. Cases dropped after a vaccine was introduced in the 1940s, and for decades, fewer than 5,000 a year were reported in the U.S.

Because of side effects that included pain and swelling at the injection site, fever and apparently, in rare cases, brain damage, the vaccine was replaced in the 1990s. The newer version used only parts of the bacterium instead of the whole thing and carried fewer complications.

But cases of whooping cough began to climb, sometimes topping 25,000 a year during the past decade. Also disturbing: The proportion of cases involving children ages 7 to 10 ? most of them vaccinated ? rose from less than 10 percent before 2006 to nearly 40 percent this year, according to the CDC.

Dr. Nicola Klein and her colleagues looked at children ages 4 to 12 who received their health care through Kaiser Permanente Northern California from 2006 to 2011. They compared 277 fully vaccinated youngsters who got whooping cough to similar, vaccinated children who didn't.

The researchers found that the risk of getting whooping cough increases by about 42 percent a year after a child's last dose of vaccine.

The shortcomings in the vaccine did not become apparent until recently, when researchers had the benefit of several years of data uncorrupted by youngsters who received the old version.

Health officials have long recommended that children get vaccinated in five doses, with the first shot at 2 months and the final one between 4 and 6 years, and receive a booster shot at 11 or 12.

Now there's a growing consensus that something more needs to be done. Ideas include somehow pumping up the effectiveness of the vaccine or developing a new one. French scientists have been working on an experimental nasal spray vaccine.

Other ideas include administering the booster earlier than age 11 or adding another booster.

While some parents around the country have taken a stand against childhood vaccines, the outbreak is not being driven by unvaccinated children, according to the CDC. Most of the illnesses are in vaccinated youngsters, officials said.

Dr. Maxine Hayes, health officer for the Washington State Department of Health, said it is important that people not mistake waning immunity for flat-out ineffectiveness.

The vaccine is "still the best thing we have," she said. And vaccinated people who get whooping cough don't get as sick.

Omar Gonzalez of North Richland Hills, Texas, has become a believer in the vaccine, even though his fully vaccinated 11-year-old son caught whooping cough three years ago.

"Imagine seeing your son gasping for air," Gonzalez said. "This is really bad."

Gonzalez, who runs an investment company from his home, spent weeks caring for his son and then got sick himself.

"You don't want this, man, I'm telling you. It's scary," he said.

___

Associated Press writer Donna Gordon Blankinship in Seattle contributed to this report.

___

Online: Journal: http://www.nejm.org

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/whooping-cough-vaccine-loses-punch-too-fast-211116868.html

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The Stunted Vision of the Democratic Party | Williamson County ...

There was a moment at this week?s Democratic
convention that seemed to encapsulate the party?s stunted vision.
It came during the remarks of Maria Ciano, a Colorado woman who

presents herself as a former Republican distressed by the
modern GOP. ?I still believe in small government, but I no longer
believe in the Republican Party,? she
said. ?Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan want the government to have a
say in my family planning. They want employers to decide what kind
of birth control coverage I have ? or if I can have it at
all.?

It?s an interesting sleight-of-hand that allowed Ciano?to
get from praising small government to defending a new government
mandate in just three sentences. But that?s not why I?m quoting
her. I?m bringing her up because it?s useful to think
about?why Ciano?s?employer would have a role in her birth
control purchases in the first place.

The answer comes in two parts. First, because the law requires a
woman to get a prescription before she can buy the pill, and it
requires her to get an
invasive and frequently unnecessary medical exam before she can
acquire that prescription. Eliminate those controls, and insurance
coverage would be beside the point; the pill would be cheaply
available over the counter. Second, because changes to the tax code
in the 1940s and ?50s have channeled us into a system where
Americans overwhelmingly get their health insurance through their
jobs. Eliminate those incentives, and far fewer people would be
dependent?on their employers for insurance at all,
substantially reducing the relevance of the boss?s opinions about
birth control.

It goes without saying that Barack Obama has displayed no
interest in rolling back the FDA?s birth control rules. Nor has he
moved away from the policies that push people into employer-based
health coverage, or, more broadly, from a system where so many
medical services are purchased via insurance in the first place.
Indeed, his signature accomplishment is a law requiring people who
don?t have health insurance to buy it.

If you can?t afford

You can read the rest of this article at: http://reason.com/blog/2012/09/07/the-stunted-vision-of-the-democratic-par

Short URL: http://www.txwclp.org/?p=16089

Posted by rbutler on Sep 10 2012. Filed under Libertarian News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Source: http://www.txwclp.org/2012/09/the-stunted-vision-of-the-democratic-party/

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