AQUAPOUR

Tokyo Tap Water Too Radioactive for Infants

The Tokyo Metropolitan government announced Tuesday that the drinking water in Tokyo is above the safe radioactivity limit for infants. The water at one of the city purification plants measured 210 becquerels on Tuesday and 190 becquerels today. The safe limit for adults is 300 becquerels per liter, while the limit for infants is much [...]

store shelves are stripped clean by hoarders and panic buying

Fukushima Nuclear Reactor Workers Return

The reactor crews returned to the earthquake stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northern Japan Wednesday after a plume of radioactive steam forced them away Tuesday. The number of workers was increased from 50 to 100, and the radiation dose they can legally experience was doubled from 100 millisieverts to 250 millisieverts. Authorities [...]

A Tribute to the Japanese People

My family does not have any childhood pictures of my grandfather because looters got them after the famous San Francisco earthquake of 1906. The city residents took their household valuables, including family pictures, and buried them in the back yards, hoping they would be safe from the fires. But the looters went from yard [...]

Air Raid Hits Oil Refinery at Ras Lanuf

Air Raid Ras Lanuf Gaddafi’s jets are bombing rebel positions at the outskirts of the important oil port of Ras Lanuf on the central Libyan coast. The rebel forces are shooting back with anti-air-artillery. Some diesel fuel storage tanks at the As-Sidra refinery and at least one pipeline have been hit. The rebels are [...]

Libya Rebels Clash With Gaddafi Forces on Push for Sirte

Libyan Revolution The uprising in Libya is fast becoming a civil war. There does not seem to be a quick solution. The rebel forces control cities on both sides of the capital Tripoli. The greatest weight of anti-government forces are located in the eastern city of Benghazi. Roughly half-way between Benghazi and Tripoli lies [...]

Tokyo Tap Water Too Radioactive for Infants

Posted by Tom Carroll on March 23rd, 2011

The Tokyo Metropolitan government announced Tuesday that the drinking water in Tokyo is above the safe radioactivity limit for infants. The water at one of the city purification plants measured 210 becquerels on Tuesday and 190 becquerels today.

The safe limit for adults is 300 becquerels per liter, while the limit for infants is much lower: 100 becquerels.

Infants are more susceptible to radiation damage than adults. Unborn children suffer the worst damage, closely followed by infants. Radiation damage is similar to aging, so the elderly are least at risk.

okutama reservoir is the largest feeding a city

The water for Tokyo comes from the Okutama Reservoir, the largest of it's kind in the world. The runoff from radiation-carrying rain has increased the level or radioactive contamination to the point of danger for children under 12 months.

Iodine-131

The radiation source is Iodine-131 from the Fukushima power plant disaster. It is a radioactive pollutant which has drifted 200 km (120 miles) driven by the winds. It got airborne when radioactive reactor water got so hot it turned to steam and wafted away. Officials believe it got in the Tokyo water from the rain.

A major danger from Iodine-131 is that it is identical chemically with dietary iodine. If a person is low on iodine when they are exposed to the radioactive isotope of iodine, their bodies accumulate the isotope in the thyroid, where the radiation damages it.

Tokyo stressed that even over the long haul it is safe for adults.

“Even if you drink this water for one year, it will not affect people’s health,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said.

Bottled mineral water sold out in minutes when the public learned the tap water was radioactive.

The Metropolitan Waterworks Bureau announced Wednesday that they would deliver bottled water to families with infants. There are about 80,000 households with infants in the effected region.

Japan Earthquake Effected Princeton Parapsychology Experiment

Posted by James H. Abernathy on March 21st, 2011

Japan’s earthquake, tsunami and reactor problems appear to have influenced a parapsychology experiment based at Princeton University. The Global Consciousness Project is a global network of sensors that is the outgrowth of three decades of laboratory experiments which seem to show that human consciousness effects random events.

The sensors, called Random Number Generators, or RNGs. are based on electronic coin-flipping. They generate random 1s and 0s according to the “noise” of circuit elements. According to the website, http://noosphere.princeton.edu/, humans can generate a slight, but statistically noticeable skewing of the outcome of a large numbers of trials. In effect, people’s consciousness throws the odds from the expected 50-50 shake of 1s and 0s, to an outcome slightly favoring one or the other.

The Princeton group has installed these RNGs all over the world, and claim to have found hundreds of statistically significant correlations with world events ranging from the funeral of Princess Dianna to midnight on Y2K.

random number generator data detect a deviation from randomness at time of quake

One of the RNGs is located at Meiji University at Meiji, Japan. According to the website, “We see a striking deviation away from expectation beginning around the time of the earthquake and persisting to the end of the formally specified event.”

The green line shows a -2.4 sigma deviation from true randomness, which should be along the horizontal black line. The red line is the deviation for the worldwide network of sensors. The time of the quake is marked by the black box at the left of the horizontal black line.

The report states “The results from the instances that have been analyzed thus far show considerable evidence of a correlation between particular events and the data from our network of random event generators.” It adds, “The overall result is highly significant. The odds against chance are much greater than a million to one.”

Try this at home:

If you want a widget for your computer dashboard that shows the response of the Global Consciousness Project network, you can pick it up here: http://www.globalconscious.com/dashboard/

Schoolyard Bully Video Goes Viral

Posted by Lateesha Jackson on March 19th, 2011

The bully gets a new perspective on life: upside down and heading for the concrete.

Casey Heynes, a 10th Grader in Sydney Australia, fought back against a schoolyard bully Monday and is now a world-wide hero for doing it.

A friend of the bully recorded a video of the confrontation to post on YouTube to humiliate Casey, but things didn’t turn out that way. The video went viral, people from all over the world are applauding Casey for fighting back, the citizens of Sydney are divided over it and now the bully looks like the chump.

Sixteen-year old Casey says he “snapped” after constant bullying because of his weight.

“All I was doing was defending myself. I’ve never had so much support,” he said during an interview with A Current Affair.

The bully is a much smaller 7th Grader who felt confident that he could punch Casey in the face without having a fight on his hands. He backed the much larger boy against the wall and started throwing punches. Finally Casey had enough and picked him up and threw him down hard on the concrete.

He was asked if he was a superhero, he replied with a laugh, “No, but I wish I was.”

Both boys were suspended for four days in accordance with established school guidelines.

The people of Sydney may be divided over the affair, but the world is clearly not: websites and Facebook fanpages like Casey the Punisher or this YouTube tribute with music sprang up overnight hailing his action.

You be the judge:

(YouTube is pulling this video as fast as we can put it up. We apologize if the video does not work or is not present. ED)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcYy0MpZ7MQ

Time Travel Theory May Make Time Messaging Possible

Posted by Tom Carroll on March 18th, 2011

A new iPhone app? Ho and Weiler think it may be possible to message into the past or future using their new theory. Photo courtesy Vanderbilt/John Russell

Time travel

Vanderbilt University’s Tom Weiler and graduate fellow Chu Man Ho theorize that the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful, is capable of sending particles into either the past or the future.

The research website arXiv.org published their paper on March 7.

The Collider is designed to produce enough energy in a collision that the fabled Higgs boson can be detected. The Higgs boson is theorized by some as the particle that provides protons, neutrons and electrons with mass. Going even further out on the theoretical limb, if the Higgs boson exists and can be detected, it may be accompanied by an even more elusive Higgs singlet.

The Higgs singlet has a unique property according to Weiler and Ho’s theory: Since it is only effected by the gravitational force, it can jump out of our familiar four-dimensional plane and take short cuts through a fifth-dimension before it is re-captured back in our space-time, effectively having traveled backward or forward in time.

“Our theory is a long shot, but it doesn’t violate any laws of physics or experimental constraints,” said Weiler, a professor of Physics at Vanderbilt.

The test of the theory is simple enough: just look for the Higgs singlet and its decay products a few moments before they are created in the collision. That’s right, you detect them just before they begin to exist. No problem.

T-mail

“If scientists could control the production of Higgs singlets,” Weiler speculated, “they might be able to send messages to the past or future.”

This has produced a lot of comment. One idea is similar to the SETI experiment which listens for possible messages from other civilizations in the universe: Build a receiver to decode the messages now being sent back from the future.

One comment suggested that Weiler could enter a time-loop with himself by t-mailing the winning Lotto numbers back to the day before, then fund the rest of his research.

Please see this related story:

Time Travel Possible – For Particles

Cyber Command Blocks High Bandwidth Websites

Posted by James H. Abernathy on March 17th, 2011

No Japan earthquake and tsunami videos for military personnel: you're using up the bandwidth.

Cyber Command

The U.S. Cyber Command installed a partial web-block on some commercial websites that use “extraordinary bandwidth,” a Cyber Command spokesman said Thursday. The cyber-ban was at the request of the U.S. Pacific Command, which wanted to insure that bandwidth was available for military operations.

The spokesman told the National Journal that commercial websites that are notorious for bandwidth use, like YouTube, ESPN, and other “recreational websites…that have a low mission impact” were targeted. The cyber-block is regional and only effects the jurisdiction of the Pacific Command.

The U.S. military aid mission to Japan reported in a blog that phone and internet connectivity were sporadic. The forward staging base for relief operations, located at Misawa Air Base, reported in a blog post Friday that the Defense Switched Network was having “a number of connectivity issues. Internet has been up and down due to our connections through other places in Japan.”

Relief operations require extra bandwidth at exactly the time when the communications infrastructure is damaged. Also, it is also exactly the time when viewers use up the bandwidth watching streaming video of the disaster.

The social-media websites are not blocked.

ESPN, Amazon, YouTube,Google Video, eBay, Doubleclick, Eyewonder, Pandora, StreamTheWorld, MTV, iFilm, MySpace and Metacafe are blocked. Personnel see a red screen saying “Website Blocked.”

“This action is in no way a reflection on any specific site or the content of any specific site; the action is in response to the needs of the military in a time of extreme demand on all circuits and networks in a region of the world that has been devastated by geological activity,” said a statement from U.S. Cyber Command.

Fukushima Nuclear Reactor Workers Return

Posted by Dominic Costillio on March 16th, 2011

The reactor crews returned to the earthquake stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northern Japan Wednesday after a plume of radioactive steam forced them away Tuesday.

The number of workers was increased from 50 to 100, and the radiation dose they can legally experience was doubled from 100 millisieverts to 250 millisieverts. Authorities said raising the exposure limit was “unavoidable due to the circumstances.”

The power plant was hit by the earthquake and tsunami Friday. The tsunami damaged the emergency generators that run the cooling pumps.

damage from the explosion at the fukushima daiichi nuclear power plant

This is the wreck of the No. 4 unit of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex in Okumamachi, Japan. Workers somehow have to find a way in this radioactive tangle to inject cooling water. The white smoke is from the burning No. 3 unit.

The earthquake emergency system immediately shut down the operating reactors, as planned, but the fuel rods continue to produce “decay heat.” That heat is great enough to cause the fuel rods to burn if they are not cooled.

When the radioactive fuel burns, the radioactivity is carried away in the smoke and soot, which is now falling on the inhabited areas around the plant.

The cooling systems failed and the rods boiled off the remaining water.

The oxygen in the cooling water attached to the cladding on the fuel rods, and freed the water’s hydrogen gas. The hydrogen gas then exploded, blowing the concrete roofs off three of the reactors.

The emergency crews have to clear the rubble from the explosions in order to get water cannons close enough to the reactor buildings.

The environment around the plant is covered with radioactive soot from the burning fuel rods, and the reactors are still producing very high levels of radiation.

The workers are all wearing full protective suits to keep the dust off of their bodies, especially from inhaling it, but the suits cannot protect from the deadly rays given off by the dust, or more importantly, given off by the reactors. All the workers who have chosen to stay at the plant are receiving very significant levels of radiation. Imagine getting a sunburn all the way to your bones.

The greatest danger is that the fuel rods will melt and begin to flow away from the control rods. The control rods keep the fuel bundle from having enough neutron radiation in common to form a chain reaction. The chain reaction produces enormous heat, and if the fuel flows past the control rods, there is no mechanism to stop the chain reaction, which will produce tons of radioactive smoke and airborne soot.

The only good news is that decay heat subsides over a period of weeks. If the fuel can be kept cool, the situation will gradually improve. That’s still a big “if.”

Please see these related stories:

A Tribute to the Japanese People

Earthquake Crippled Japanese Nuclear Reactor Explodes

Terrible Earthquake and Tsunami Hit Japan

A Tribute to the Japanese People

Posted by Tom Carroll on March 14th, 2011

My family does not have any childhood pictures of my grandfather because looters got them after the famous San Francisco earthquake of 1906. The city residents took their household valuables, including

family pictures, and buried them in the back yards, hoping they would be safe from the fires. But the looters went from yard to yard and dug them up.

looters caught after the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906

Maybe one of these bums knows where my family's silverware and pictures are.

The Army had to be called out with orders to “Shoot to Kill.”

So we needn’t point to Katrina to find looting, it is as American as stolen apple pie.

Right now we are seeing pictures of a dazed people staggering out of cities crushed by a devastation so sudden and complete it is second only to Hiroshima. But we are not seeing people stealing TVs from earthquake crushed shops.

There is no panic, there is no fighting for scarce food and water, there is no looting.

The Japanese don’t even have a word for looting.

“Looting simply does not take place in Japan. I’m not even sure if there’s a word for it that is as clear in its implications as when we hear ‘looting,’” said Gregory Pflugfelder, director of the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University.

people stagger away from earthquake devastated city

People stagger away from the earthquake devastated city in northern Japan

Japanese have “a sense of being first and foremost responsible to the community,” he said.

“Gas and water have been switched off in Miyagi and the central city of Sendai. With rare exceptions, electricity is also off. But there is no panic either in the streets or shops,” an eyewitness said.

He gave an example of the situation.

“The shop has all its windows and its glass door broken. There is an ATM and shelves with food products inside the shop and no one is guarding it. However, no one has ever entered it and nothing has been looted,” the eyewitness said.

Coffee Reduces Stroke Risk in Women

Posted by Amy Sue Andrews on March 12th, 2011

Get a health buzz, ladies. That cup of coffee will do you wonders.

The research journal Stroke reports that women who drink a cup or more a day of coffee have a reduced risk for stroke. Greater consumption did not reduce the risk further.

The study followed 34,670 women aged 49 to 83 and found a 23% to 25% reduction in incidence of stroke compared to those who drink little or no coffee. During the 10 year follow up there were 1,680 strokes among the sample population.

So far, the mechanism in coffee consumption that effects strokes is not known.

“Additional prospective studies on coffee consumption and stroke incidence as well as mechanistic studies investigating possible effects of coffee consumption on cardiovascular risk factors are warranted,” writes Susanna C. Larsson, PhD, leader of the study. She is the lead researcher in nutritional epidemiology at the National Institute of Environmental Medicine of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.

There have been suggestions that coffee actually added a slight increase in the chance for stroke due to the increase in blood pressure and heart rate. The Swedish study seems to allay these concerns.

“It is quite clear that coffee consumption at moderate to even high levels does not increase risk of stroke,” says Eric Rimm, ScD, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Roger Bonomo, MD, director of stroke care at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, says that giving up coffee to protect your health is not a good idea.

“Eliminating coffee isn’t good for your health,” Roger Bonomo, MD.says, “Keep your coffee habits at a steady state.” He is the director of stroke care at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

Cathy A. Sila, MD, the George M. Humphrey II Professor of Neurology and the director of the Stroke & Cerebrovascular Center at the Neurological Institute Case Medical Center of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio is not sure which way to go on the issue of coffee and strokes. She urges caution and taking care of the known factors.

“The single most important risk factor for all stroke is high blood pressure, and the vast majority of people either don’t know they have it or know that they do and it is still not being controlled,” she says. “Get your blood pressure measured and if it is elevated, put a plan in place to lower it.” This may include losing weight, reducing salt intake, or taking medication.

“This is the most powerful thing we can do to lower stroke risk,” she says.

Some related stories:

More Good News For Coffee Drinkers

Study Links Diet Soda To Heart Attack And Stroke

Salt Worldwide Health Danger: WHO

Earthquake Crippled Japanese Nuclear Reactor Explodes

Posted by James H. Abernathy on March 12th, 2011

Japan nuclear power plant daiichi exploded after damage from earthquake and tsunami.

The containment building at the damaged nuclear power plant exploded Saturday afternoon. It may have been caused by a buildup of steam or hydrogen. There are grave fears the core is melting.

Reactor Explosion

One of Japan’s earthquake-damaged nuclear reactors exploded Saturday at 3:40 Japan time. There are conflicting reports on radiation released. Some reports maintain the background level of radiation is normal, and other reports indicate a radioactive isotope of the element cesium has been detected outside the plant. Cesium is a byproduct of the nuclear fission process. Finding it means there has been a breech of the fuel system.

“We’ve confirmed that the reactor container was not damaged. The explosion didn’t occur inside the reactor container. As such there was no large amount of radiation leakage outside,” Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters Saturday night. “At this point, there has been no major change to the level of radiation leakage outside, so we’d like everyone to respond calmly.”

The explosion at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station caused the release of radiation which prompted officials to create a 20 km (12 mile) evacuation zone.

Please watch Al Jazeera’s story:

The plant was damaged by the earthquake, and the nuclear reaction was shut down normally. A nuclear generating station works by allowing the uranium fuel to get very hot, which creates steam for the generator turbines. When the process is shut down, there is a great deal of heat remaining, enough to melt the fuel and loose control of the process, a condition called a “melt-down.” It is mandatory to cool the fuel. When the tsunami hit the plant, the cooling system was damaged.

The residual heat caused water in the system to boil to steam, with a greater and greater pressure build-up. Some say that is what exploded, others say hydrogen gas exploded.

Tokyo Electric Power is going to take the drastic step to allow sea water into the reactor as a last-ditch attempt to keep the fuel from melting any further. If the fuel melts, it flows past the control rods and the nuclear chain reaction begins again, called “criticality.”

Mr. Edano said they were confident the sea water would “prevent criticality.”

Naoto Sekimura, from Tokyo University, told Japan public broadcaster NHK, that “only a small portion of the fuel has been melted. But the plant is shut down already, and being cooled down. Most of the fuel is contained in the plant case, so I would like to ask people to be calm.”

In 1987 the Ukranian nuclear plant at Chernobyl suffered a melt-down due to human error. The explosion caused radioactive smoke and thick soot that devastated the region and was detected all over Europe. That’s what is at stake with the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Please look at the companion story:

Terrible Earthquake and Tsunami Hit Japan

Posted by Dominic Costillio on March 11th, 2011

a tsunami wave crushed towns and pushed the burning rubble inland

The earthquake caused a tremendous tsunami that crushed towns and pushed the burning rubble inland.

Earthquake

An 8.9 earthquake struck 200 km (130 miles) off the north pacific coast of Japan Friday. The major buildings and bridges did not collapse, but a 4 meter (13 foot) tsunami flooded inland wiping away towns, cars, people, everything.

Nuclear Reactor

The nuclear power generating stations suffered damage and had to shut down. There is a concern that one reactor may be in trouble due to a failure of the cooling system. The cooling system needs to function even if the reactor is shut down.

This is the worst quake in Japan’s recorded history.

This video is from Russia Today:

Tsunami

The death toll will be very high. Hundreds of people are already known to have been washed out to sea. The cost to repair the damage will be colossal, the cost to Japan’s economy and to the world economy will be significant.

The harbor at Crescent City, California, thousands of kilometers away, was destroyed. Other areas along the west coast of the United States and Canada were more fortunate.

Tokyo Tap Water Too Radioactive for Infants

Fukushima Nuclear Reactor Workers Return

A Tribute to the Japanese People

Air Raid Hits Oil Refinery at Ras Lanuf

Libya Rebels Clash With Gaddafi Forces on Push for Sirte

Tokyo Tap Water Too Radioactive for Infants

Iodine-131

Japan Earthquake Effected Princeton Parapsychology Experiment

Schoolyard Bully Video Goes Viral

Time Travel Theory May Make Time Messaging Possible

A new iPhone app? Ho and Weiler think it may be possible to message into the past or future using their new theory. Photo courtesy Vanderbilt/John Russell

Time travel

T-mail

Time Travel Possible – For Particles

Cyber Command Blocks High Bandwidth Websites

Cyber Command

Fukushima Nuclear Reactor Workers Return

A Tribute to the Japanese People

Earthquake Crippled Japanese Nuclear Reactor Explodes

Terrible Earthquake and Tsunami Hit Japan

A Tribute to the Japanese People

Coffee Reduces Stroke Risk in Women

More Good News For Coffee Drinkers

Study Links Diet Soda To Heart Attack And Stroke

Salt Worldwide Health Danger: WHO

Earthquake Crippled Japanese Nuclear Reactor Explodes

Reactor Explosion

Terrible Earthquake and Tsunami Hit Japan

Terrible Earthquake and Tsunami Hit Japan

Earthquake

Nuclear Reactor

Tsunami

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