via radiotimes.com
Friday, 12 April 2013
Doubts raised over cause of refugee camp fire | Bangkok Post: news
Questions raised over cause of refugee camp blaze According to official sources, the fire at Mae Surin was an accident. But several eyewitnesses and a senior police officer who headed the initial probe remain unconvinced Published: 7 Apr 2013 at 00.00Newspaper section: Spectrum Two weeks after 38 people were killed in a fire at the Mae Surin camp in Mae Hong Son province, the circumstances that led to the fatal blaze remain unclear. SUSPICIOUS SMOKE: The police officer in charge of the initial investigation said he was puzzled by the black smoke created by the blaze. House fires usually produce white smoke, he said. In the aftermath of the tragedy, which has been described as the worst to hit a border refugee camp in more than 25 years, the military has maintained a tight lid on the scene. As well as the fatalities, more than 2,300 Karen and Karenni refugees were left homeless, 100 people were injured and 400 dwellings were destroyed. While there has yet to be an official declaration of the cause of the fire, media reports have pointed to three possible explanations: a cooking accident, a forest fire and arson. Spectrum visited the camp last week to get eyewitness accounts o
via bangkokpost.com
Thursday, 11 April 2013
Demand an end to brutal ‘sorcery’ killings in Papua New Guinea - Amnesty International Australia
Demand an end to brutal ‘sorcery’ killings in Papua New Guinea Crisis, Individuals at Risk, Petition Last week Helen Rumbali, a women's rights advocate and former school teacher, was beheaded in front of her community in Papua New Guinea after three days of unspeakable torture. Police stood by and watched, reporting that they were unable to intervene to stop the angry mob. Why was she murdered? Helen was accused of 'sorcery', and brutal attacks like this one are not uncommon. The law and police inaction effectively condone such violence. The "Sorcery Act" in PNG law offers a reduced sentence if a perpetrator of violent crime uses allegations of 'sorcery' as an excuse -- even for murder. Right now another woman and her two daughters have been captured at Lopele, Bana District Southern Bougainville. She has been accused of sorcery. We are extremely concerned for the safety of these three women. Demand Papua New Guinean authorities act urgently to stop 'sorcery' killings Demand the Bougainville Police Command need to use all available resources to save this woman's life; and also that PNG authorities bring the perpetrators of these crimes to justice and fast-track the reform of
via amnesty.org.au
Monday, 8 April 2013
Icelandic Lawmaker Birgitta Jonsdottir on Challenging Gov’t Secrecy From Twitter to Bradley Manning
DONATE →This is viewer supported newsIcelandic Parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir played a critical role in Wikileaks’ release of the “Collateral Murder” video, which showed a U.S. military helicopter in July 2007 as it killed 12 people and wounded two children in Iraq. Jonsdottir joins us on her first trip to the United States since a secret grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, began its investigation of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. She also discusses her role at the center of another closely watched legal case — challenging of the government’s effort to obtain her Twitter records without a warrant, and why she has come to the United States to champion the cases of military whistleblower Bradley Manning and the accused hacker Jeremy Hammond. [Transcript to come. Check back soon.]
Please check back later for full transcript.
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via democracynow.org
Saturday, 6 April 2013
Breakthrough in hydrogen fuel production could revolutionize alternative energy market
BLACKSBURG, Va., April 4, 2013 – A team of Virginia Tech researchers has discovered a way to extract large quantities of hydrogen from any plant, a breakthrough that has the potential to bring a low-cost, environmentally friendly fuel source to the world.
“Our new process could help end our dependence on fossil fuels,” said Y.H. Percival Zhang, an associate professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering. “Hydrogen is one of the most important biofuels of the future.”
Zhang and his team have succeeded in using xylose, the most abundant simple plant sugar, to produce a large quantity of hydrogen that previously was attainable only in theory. Zhang’s method can be performed using any source of biomass.
The discovery is a featured editor’s choice in an online version of the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie, International Edition.
This new environmentally friendly method of producing hydrogen utilizes renewable natural resources, releases almost no greenhouse gasses, and does not require costly or heavy metals. Previous methods to produce hydrogen are expensive and create greenhouse gases.
The U.S. Department of Energy says that hydrogen fuel has the potential to dramatically reduce reliance on fossil fuels and automobile manufacturers are aggressively trying to develop vehicles that run on hydrogen fuel cells. Unlike gas-powered engines that spew out pollutants, the only byproduct of hydrogen fuel is water. Zhang’s discovery opens the door to an inexpensive, renewable source of hydrogen.
Jonathan R. Mielenz, group leader of the bioscience and technology biosciences division at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who is familiar with Zhang’s work but not affiliated with this project, said this discovery has the potential to have a major impact on alternative energy production.
“The key to this exciting development is that Zhang is using the second most prevalent sugar in plants to produce this hydrogen,” he said. “This amounts to a significant additional benefit to hydrogen production and it reduces the overall cost of producing hydrogen from biomass.”
Mielenz said Zhang’s process could find its way to the marketplace as quickly as three years if the technology is available. Zhang said when it does become commercially available, it has the possibility of making an enormous impact.
“The potential for profit and environmental benefits are why so many automobile, oil, and energy companies are working on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as the transportation of the future,” Zhang said. “Many people believe we will enter the hydrogen economy soon, with a market capacity of at least $1 trillion in the United States alone.”
Obstacles to commercial production of hydrogen gas from biomass previously included the high cost of the processes used and the relatively low quantity of the end product.
But Zhang says he thinks he has found the answers to those problems.
For seven years, Zhang’s team has been focused on finding non-traditional ways to produce high-yield hydrogen at low cost, specifically researching enzyme combinations, discovering novel enzymes, and engineering enzymes with desirable properties.
The team liberates the high-purity hydrogen under mild reaction conditions at 122 degrees and normal atmospheric pressure. The biocatalysts used to release the hydrogen are a group of enzymes artificially isolated from different microorganisms that thrive at extreme temperatures, some of which could grow at around the boiling point of water.
The researchers chose to use xylose, which comprises as much as 30 percent of plant cell walls. Despite its abundance, the use of xylose for releasing hydrogen has been limited. The natural or engineered microorganisms that most scientists use in their experiments cannot produce hydrogen in high yield because these microorganisms grow and reproduce instead of splitting water molecules to yield pure hydrogen.
To liberate the hydrogen, Virginia Tech scientists separated a number of enzymes from their native microorganisms to create a customized enzyme cocktail that does not occur in nature. The enzymes, when combined with xylose and a polyphosphate, liberate the unprecedentedly high volume of hydrogen from xylose, resulting in the production of about three times as much hydrogen as other hydrogen-producing microorganisms.
The energy stored in xylose splits water molecules, yielding high-purity hydrogen that can be directly utilized by proton-exchange membrane fuel cells. Even more appealing, this reaction occurs at low temperatures, generating hydrogen energy that is greater than the chemical energy stored in xylose and the polyphosphate. This results in an energy efficiency of more than 100 percent — a net energy gain. That means that low-temperature waste heat can be used to produce high-quality chemical energy hydrogen for the first time. Other processes that convert sugar into biofuels such as ethanol and butanol always have energy efficiencies of less than 100 percent, resulting in an energy penalty.
In his previous research, Zhang used enzymes to produce hydrogen from starch, but the reaction required a food source that made the process too costly for mass production.
The commercial market for hydrogen gas is now around $100 billion for hydrogen produced from natural gas, which is expensive to manufacture and generates a large amount of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Industry most often uses hydrogen to manufacture ammonia for fertilizers and to refine petrochemicals, but an inexpensive, plentiful green hydrogen source can rapidly change that market.
“It really doesn’t make sense to use non-renewable natural resources to produce hydrogen,” Zhang said. “We think this discovery is a game-changer in the world of alternative energy.”
Support for the current research comes from the Department of Biological Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech. Additional resources were contributed by the Shell GameChanger Program, the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ Biodesign and Bioprocessing Research Center, and the U.S. Department of Energy BioEnergy Science Center, along with the Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences and Biosciences, Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the Department of Energy. The lead author of the article, Julia S. Martin Del Campo, who works in Zhang’s lab, received her Ph.D. grant from the Mexican Council of Science and Technology.
Nationally ranked among the top research institutions of its kind, Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences focuses on the science and business of living systems through learning, discovery, and engagement. The college’s comprehensive curriculum gives more than 3,100 students in a dozen academic departments a balanced education that ranges from food and fiber production to economics to human health. Students learn from the world’s leading agricultural scientists, who bring the latest science and technology into the classroom.
via vtnews.vt.edu
Friday, 5 April 2013
WikiLeaks - BEAT THE BLOCKADE April 5th
On April 5, ‘Beat the Blockade’ by donating $5 to WikiLeaks
We launched the ‘Beat the Blockade’ campaign site one year ago, starting with a day of action on April 5, 2012 to protest the extrajudicial financial blockade of WikiLeaks and raise vital funds for their work to continue.
While Julian Assange fights legal battles under the serious threat of extradition to the United States to face secretly drawn up espionage charges, WikiLeaks continues to analyse and publish information that reveals truths about the world, its power relationships and injustices, most recently the Stratfor release, the ‘Global Intelligence Files’. And yet they struggle to operate under an extended ban processing on payments to them by US based corporate giants Visa, MasterCard, Western Union, PayPal and Bank of America.
We have since promoted the Beat the Blockade CD, run a Christmas Gift Ideas campaign over the holiday season and promoted the new WikiLeaks payment methods as they became available.
In August of last year the WikiLeaks website was subjected to a week long DDoS attack, and the Beat the Blockade website was able to provide WikiLeaks supporters with direct access to donation methods despite the wikileaks.org website being down. WikiLeaks tweeted ”Despite the contiued 10Gb+ DDoS attack on WikiLeaks you can still donate via our Beat the Blockade campaign site http://beattheblockade.org/ “
By logging on to beattheblockade.org on April 5 and donating at least $5 by one of the easy payment methods, people around the world can send a message to the companies engaged in the blockade – and the governments that regulate them – that censorship of a free press publisher and denying consumers their rights will not be tolerated.
Since 7th December 2010 an arbitrary and unlawful financial blockade has been imposed by Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union on WikiLeaks. The attack has destroyed 95% of Wikileaks’ revenue. The blockade came into force within ten days of the launch of Cablegate as part of a concerted US-based, political attack on a free press publishing organisation that has breached no law in any country, and that won the 2011 Australian Walkley Award for outstanding contribution to journalism.
This April 5, together we will Beat the Blockade by each donating $5 to WikiLeaks.
Scribd, “world’s largest online library,” admits to network intrusion, password breach | Naked Security
by Paul Ducklin on April 5, 2013 | Leave a comment FILED UNDER: Data loss, Featured San Francisco-based document sharing site Scribd has admitted to a network intrusion. Scribd bills itself as The World's Largest Online Library, and with a suggested 50 million users or more, it's hardly surprising that the site has attracted the attention of cybercriminals. Details are scant, but a notification published on the company's online Support Desk states:
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