Brazil's General Superintendency of Prisons of Alagoas (SGAP) released this photo last Dec. 31 of a cat caught with contraband taped to its body at a medium-security prison in Alagoas state.
AP
Brazil's General Superintendency of Prisons of Alagoas (SGAP) released this photo last Dec. 31 of a cat caught with contraband taped to its body at a medium-security prison in Alagoas state.
AP
January:
"Cat Caught Smuggling Contraband Into Brazilian Prison." Gothamist
June:
"Cat Caught Smuggling Cell Phones Into Prison" (in Russia). The Moscow Times
Last week:
"Cannabis Cat On Drugs Run Collared At Moldova Jail." BBC News
So, we've got reports of:
— "Saws, drills, headset, memory card, cell phone, batteries and a phone charger" being" strapped to a cat in Brazil.
— "Two cell phones with batteries and chargers" being taped to a cat's back in Russia.
— And now, "bags of cannabis" concealed inside the "oversize decorative collar" worn by a cat in Moldova.
In each case, the felines were nabbed as they either climbed over or through fences. In Moldova, the cat had been "seen repeatedly entering and exiting a small hole in a prison fence," according to Gawker.
According to the reports, the cats aren't talking.
Children play at the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, where more than 120,000 Syrian refugees live. Roughly two-thirds are kids, many of whom have been traumatized by the violence in their homeland.
Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps
Children play at the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, where more than 120,000 Syrian refugees live. Roughly two-thirds are kids, many of whom have been traumatized by the violence in their homeland.
Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps
Alexandra Chen, a specialist in childhood trauma, is on her way from the Lebanese capital, Beirut, to the southern town of Nabatiyeh, where she's running a workshop for teachers, child psychologists and sports coaches who are dealing with the Syrian children scarred by war in their homeland.
"All of the children have experienced trauma to varying degree," explains Chen, who works for Mercy Corps and is training a dozen new hires for her aid group.
Her intense five-day workshop is based on skills and techniques developed in other conflict zones, used for the first time here.
"They need to know enough to understand exactly what's going on in the brain of the children they are working with," Chen says of her trainees. Her course stresses the science of severe trauma, which can be toxic for the brain.
"The human memory remembers negative memories almost four times more strongly than positive ones," she says.
Some 2 million Syrian children have been displaced by the war and more than 1 million of them are now refugees in neighboring countries. One of the biggest challenges for international aid agencies is healing the invisible scars of war in the youngest victims.
Mercy Corps organizes games and movies at the Zaatari camp to help children return to more normal activities and routines.
Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps
Mercy Corps organizes games and movies at the Zaatari camp to help children return to more normal activities and routines.
Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps
"These children have seen terrible things, like bombings and people screaming and people dying, and they've smelled blood and smoke," Chen says as she opens the course. "For them, to be connected to the world feels like a very dangerous thing."
PTSD In Children
Chen tells the trainees that long-term exposure to violence can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, which is difficult to treat in adults and even harder to manage in kids. Children can remain hyper-alert, with an "inability to step out of survival mode," which is often expressed as anger or aggression.
This group has already seen signs of severe trauma in Syrian children who recently arrived. Chen teaches them key skills to build a sense of safety for children.
But these newly trained Mercy Corps outreach workers face an overwhelming task. More than 85,000 Syrian refugees have migrated to this part of southern Lebanon, living in the poorest neighborhoods. Aid programs are underfunded and basic needs often go unmet.
Still, international aid organizations are raising the alarm over the newest arrivals. They have lived under traumatic conditions for much longer, surviving continuous bombardments, witnessing deaths firsthand, and many need immediate help.
Chen moves between workshops in Lebanon and refugee camps in Jordan to tackle the same problem.
A Camp Where Most Refugees Are Children
We met again in Zaatari, the sprawling camp in Jordan's desert with more than 120,000 residents, 65 percent of them under 18. Here, children seem dangerously aggressive, punching, fighting or throwing rocks in the open spaces between the refugee tents and trailers.
"Acting aggressively, in many ways, is the mind's way of making sense of what happened before," says Chen, who adds that she has seen behavior change. Many have made progress in a program run by Mercy Corps in a place called Dream Land.
It's in the middle of Zaatari, where kids can feel secure. They play soccer or build sandcastles in soft sand under a large tent that protects them from the sun.
Here, kids hammer on Legos in nearby trailers, while others sit, quietly, watching Tom and Jerry cartoons.
"The fact that they can sit there for an hour of Tom and Jerry is quite remarkable" says Chen, calling it a sign of healing.
But for some, the terrible memories can still become a trigger in daily life.
"The misunderstanding about trauma is that it is an event we have been unable to deal with in the past," she explains. In severe cases of PTSD, she says, "it is the person's inability to engage with the present that is the problem."
There have been some children who sneak into Dream Land in the middle of the night, she says.
"There was a little boy who would come at 3 a.m.," she says. "He would hide in the corner of the tent and shake. The stress that he was expressing was too much in his own little mind. He was unable to sleep. So, this is where he came to find refuge."
And that was a small success, that he had found a safe place.
Yeah I would say fantasy and sci-fi are my forte. Likewise, we look forward to your universes. And if you ever have any questions, you can ask anybody here. We have a Help Forum for you to post questions if you can not pm somebody for help. We have a ten post minimum rule to activate your personal messaging options because we're doing our part to fight the war on terror (not really, but you know).
On behalf of everyone here at RPG, RolePlayGateway, we're glad to have you here.
Don't even think about posting cartoon nipples on Facebook. Decapitations, however? Go right ahead. Six months after establishing a ban on blatant, gruesome beheadings, Facebook has decided to (once again) keep videos of decapitations available to the masses.
MOSCOW (AP) — A female suicide bomber blew herself up on a city bus in southern Russia on Monday, killing six people and injuring about 30, officials said. The attack in Volgograd added to security fears ahead of the Winter Olympics in Sochi.
The suspected bomber was from the North Caucasus, a region in southern Russia where an Islamic insurgency has been simmering for more than a decade following two separatist wars in Chechnya. A local official said the suspected attacker was married to an Islamic militant.
Volgograd lies 650 kilometers (400 miles) to the northeast of the North Caucasus, while Sochi sits to the west along the Black Sea.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for Monday's suicide bombing, but it was the first outside the North Caucasus since Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov three months ago called for a resumption of attacks on civilians and urged militants to target the Sochi Games, which are to be held in February.
Russia in past years has seen a series of terror attacks on buses, airplanes and other forms of transportation, some of them carried out by suicide bombers. The last suicide attack on a bus was in 2008.
Twin bombings on the Moscow subway in March 2010 carried out by female suicide bombers killed 40 people and wounded more than 120. In January 2011, a male suicide bomber struck Moscow's Domodedovo Airport, killing 37 people and injuring more than 180.
Umarov, who had claimed responsibility for the 2010 and 2011 bombings, ordered a halt to attacks on civilian targets because of the mass street protests against President Vladimir Putin in the winter of 2011-12. He reversed that order in July.
The suspected bomber was from Dagestan, one of the predominantly Muslim republics in the North Caucasus, said Vladimir Markin, the spokesman for the Investigative Committee, Russia's main investigative agency.
In a statement, he identified the suspect as 30-year-old Naida Asiyalova. Russian state television showed pictures of Asiyalova's passport.
In Dagestan, the center of the insurgency, bombings and shootings occur almost daily. Most of them target law enforcement officers, not civilians. The Tsarnaev brothers, accused of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombings, have roots in Dagestan and Chechnya.
Rasul Temirbekov, a spokesman for the Investigative Committee's branch in Dagestan, said the suspected bomber was married to an ethnic Russian, Dmitry Sokolov, whom she had met while both were university students in Moscow.
She encouraged him to become a rebel, and he quickly gained a reputation as an expert in explosives, Temirbekov said. Sokolov, whose nom de guerre is Abdul Jabbar, has been on the run.
Temirbekov said that the suspected suicide bomber had a fatal bone illness.
Video broadcast on state Rossiya television showed that Monday's explosion occurred as the bus was moving in the far right lane of a divided six-lane road. The video, taken from a vehicle traveling behind the bus, showed a burst of flame and gray smoke. Fragments of what appeared to be window frames and other parts of the bus were left scattered across the road.
When the bus came to a stop, the video showed many passengers jumping out.
Markin said seven people died, including the suicide bomber, and 33 asked for medical assistance, 28 of whom were hospitalized. Emergency officials said about 40 people were on the bus.
The local government on Monday placed security forces in the Volgograd region on high alert for 15 days.
___
AP writers Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and Arsen Mollayev in Makhachkala contributed to this report.
Contact: Mike W. Neff mwneff@ashs.org 703-836-4606 American Society for Horticultural Science
Recommendations for Manilagrass planting, irrigation found in study
ATHENS, GREECE -- Green roofs, rooftops covered with vegetation, provide multiple environmental and aesthetic benefits. These "living roofs" are increasing in popularity worldwide. As more cities invest in green roofs, planners are challenged to find plants that can thrive in shallow planting conditions and with minimal maintenance. A new study from researchers in Greece offers recommendations for the use of turfgrass in green roof environments.
Nikolaos Ntoulas, Panayiotis A. Nektarios, and Efthimia Nydrioti from the Department of Crop Science at Agricultural University of Athens published the results of their experiments with Manilagrass in HortScience. Author Nikolaos Ntoulas explained that although turfgrasses meet the three requirements of plants recommended for use in urban environments (aesthetics, function, and recreation), these grasses have seldom been evaluated on extensive green roofs due to their high water demands. Ntoulas and colleagues compared the growth of Zoysia matrella 'Zeon' in two different substrates. They also investigated the impact of increasing either substrate depth or the amount of irrigation on Manilagrass growth and recovery potential during and after moisture deficit periods. The 2-year outdoor study was conducted on a rooftop at the Laboratory of Floriculture and Landscape Architecture in Athens.
The experiments involved three factors: two substrate types, two substrate depths, and two irrigation regimes replicated five times. "The results showed that, during moisture deficit periods, green turf cover (GTC), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and leaf relative water content (RWC) were most affected by substrate depth, moderately affected by irrigation regime, and, to a lesser extent, by substrate type," the authors said. "Turfgrass growth and physiological status were best during moisture deficit conditions in the deeper profile (15 cm) using the higher amount of irrigation (6 mm) and the locally mixed substrate."
The scientists concluded that substrate depth was the most significant factor that improved growth and drought resistance of Manilagrass; the deeper substrate resulted in improved drought tolerance when compared with the shallow substrate. "However, because load is a crucial issue on green roof construction, if substrate depth must be reduced to 7.5 cm, then irrigation should exceed 6 mm every 3 days to have adequate growth and successfully overcome summer moisture deficit periods," they recommended.
###
The complete study and abstract are available on the ASHS HortScience electronic journal web site: http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/content/48/7/929.abstract
Founded in 1903, the American Society for Horticultural Science (ASHS) is the largest organization dedicated to advancing all facets of horticultural research, education, and application. More information at ashs.org
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Turfgrass tested in shallow green roof substrates
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
21-Oct-2013
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Contact: Mike W. Neff mwneff@ashs.org 703-836-4606 American Society for Horticultural Science
Recommendations for Manilagrass planting, irrigation found in study
ATHENS, GREECE -- Green roofs, rooftops covered with vegetation, provide multiple environmental and aesthetic benefits. These "living roofs" are increasing in popularity worldwide. As more cities invest in green roofs, planners are challenged to find plants that can thrive in shallow planting conditions and with minimal maintenance. A new study from researchers in Greece offers recommendations for the use of turfgrass in green roof environments.
Nikolaos Ntoulas, Panayiotis A. Nektarios, and Efthimia Nydrioti from the Department of Crop Science at Agricultural University of Athens published the results of their experiments with Manilagrass in HortScience. Author Nikolaos Ntoulas explained that although turfgrasses meet the three requirements of plants recommended for use in urban environments (aesthetics, function, and recreation), these grasses have seldom been evaluated on extensive green roofs due to their high water demands. Ntoulas and colleagues compared the growth of Zoysia matrella 'Zeon' in two different substrates. They also investigated the impact of increasing either substrate depth or the amount of irrigation on Manilagrass growth and recovery potential during and after moisture deficit periods. The 2-year outdoor study was conducted on a rooftop at the Laboratory of Floriculture and Landscape Architecture in Athens.
The experiments involved three factors: two substrate types, two substrate depths, and two irrigation regimes replicated five times. "The results showed that, during moisture deficit periods, green turf cover (GTC), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and leaf relative water content (RWC) were most affected by substrate depth, moderately affected by irrigation regime, and, to a lesser extent, by substrate type," the authors said. "Turfgrass growth and physiological status were best during moisture deficit conditions in the deeper profile (15 cm) using the higher amount of irrigation (6 mm) and the locally mixed substrate."
The scientists concluded that substrate depth was the most significant factor that improved growth and drought resistance of Manilagrass; the deeper substrate resulted in improved drought tolerance when compared with the shallow substrate. "However, because load is a crucial issue on green roof construction, if substrate depth must be reduced to 7.5 cm, then irrigation should exceed 6 mm every 3 days to have adequate growth and successfully overcome summer moisture deficit periods," they recommended.
###
The complete study and abstract are available on the ASHS HortScience electronic journal web site: http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/content/48/7/929.abstract
Founded in 1903, the American Society for Horticultural Science (ASHS) is the largest organization dedicated to advancing all facets of horticultural research, education, and application. More information at ashs.org
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Weatherizing homes to uniform standard can achieve $33 billion in annual energy savings
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
21-Oct-2013
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Contact: Julie Chao jhchao@lbl.gov 510-486-6491 DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Berkeley Lab energy efficiency experts also calculate energy cost of upgrading ventilation
With winter around the corner some homeowners may be thinking about plugging all the leaks in their home to make them less drafty. Imagine if every homeowner in the country did thathow much energy could be saved? Using physics-based modeling of the U.S. housing stock, researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) found in a new study that upgrading airtightness to a uniform level could achieve as much as $33 billion in annual energy savings.
"Currently people who weatherize can get their homes about 20 to 30 percent tighter. But they're not sealing all the cracks. There's still quite a bit left on the table, and those extra leaks and cracks could potentially save a lot of energy," said Berkeley Lab scientist Jennifer Logue, lead author of the study, "Energy impacts of envelope tightening and mechanical ventilation for the U.S. residential sector," which was recently published online in the journal Energy and Buildings. Her co-authors were Berkeley Lab scientists Max Sherman, Iain Walker and Brett Singer.
Logue said the purpose of their study was to figure how much energy is wasted from leaky homes and determine the optimal standard of airtightnessone that would maximize energy savings while minimizing the cost of achieving those savings. This is an important question because the residential sector113 million homesuses about 23 percent of total U.S. source energy annually. (Source energy includes site energy, the energy consumed by buildings for heating and electricity, as well as the raw energy required to transmit, deliver and produce it.) Heating and cooling accounts for about half of the site energy used in residences.
The largest potential savings are in the hottest and coldest climates. As new air enters homes through leaks and cracks, it has to be cooled or heated. Although the trend has been towards building tighter houses, Logue says the science is still not settled on the best ways to minimize leaks. "More research is needed to figure out what are the most effective ways to weatherize," she said. "There are still benefits to be gained if we can figure out how to weatherize more effectively."
The Berkeley Lab researchers considered five levels of tightening: "average" tightening, "advanced" tightening, the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) standard, the R2000 standard (common in Canada, tighter than IECC) and the "passive house" standard, the tightest and most difficult to achieve.
They found that upgrading all homes to be as airtight as the top 10 percent of similar homes (advanced tightening) would decrease energy demand by 2.6 quads annuallyout of the total 22 quads of source energy used by the residential housing sectorleading to roughly $22 billion in savings in energy bills. Reaching the IECC standard would yield savings of 3.83 quads in annual source energy, yielding $33 billion in savings.
The study found that the IECC standard offered most of the benefit that the tighter standards would yield. Moreover this standard is likely more achievable than the tighter standards. According to their analysis, raising the U.S. housing stock to the IECC standard would reduce airflow in homes by a median value of 50 percent.
"As we move forward and look to build better housing stock, we want to know what standards we should enforce," Logue said. "It looks like the IECC standard gets us the majority of the benefit of air sealing. More research is needed to determine the costs of implementing each of these standards in new homes to see which are cost-effective. As we get better at air sealing, we can move towards tighter envelopes in buildings. "
The analysis in the study factored in the energy costs of increasing ventilation where necessary to maintain good indoor air quality. A separate analysis looked at the energy cost of only bringing the housing stock into compliance with ASHRAE 62.2, a national ventilation standard for homes that ensures sufficient ventilation for human health.
"We found that the energy burden would be pretty small, only about an additional 0.2 quads of source energy annually"less than 0.1 percent of total source energy that goes to the residential housing sector"to get everyone to the level where they're getting enough whole-house ventilation," Logue said.
###
Funding for this study came from the Department of Energy, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the California Energy Commission.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit http://www.lbl.gov.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Weatherizing homes to uniform standard can achieve $33 billion in annual energy savings
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
21-Oct-2013
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Share
Contact: Julie Chao jhchao@lbl.gov 510-486-6491 DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Berkeley Lab energy efficiency experts also calculate energy cost of upgrading ventilation
With winter around the corner some homeowners may be thinking about plugging all the leaks in their home to make them less drafty. Imagine if every homeowner in the country did thathow much energy could be saved? Using physics-based modeling of the U.S. housing stock, researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) found in a new study that upgrading airtightness to a uniform level could achieve as much as $33 billion in annual energy savings.
"Currently people who weatherize can get their homes about 20 to 30 percent tighter. But they're not sealing all the cracks. There's still quite a bit left on the table, and those extra leaks and cracks could potentially save a lot of energy," said Berkeley Lab scientist Jennifer Logue, lead author of the study, "Energy impacts of envelope tightening and mechanical ventilation for the U.S. residential sector," which was recently published online in the journal Energy and Buildings. Her co-authors were Berkeley Lab scientists Max Sherman, Iain Walker and Brett Singer.
Logue said the purpose of their study was to figure how much energy is wasted from leaky homes and determine the optimal standard of airtightnessone that would maximize energy savings while minimizing the cost of achieving those savings. This is an important question because the residential sector113 million homesuses about 23 percent of total U.S. source energy annually. (Source energy includes site energy, the energy consumed by buildings for heating and electricity, as well as the raw energy required to transmit, deliver and produce it.) Heating and cooling accounts for about half of the site energy used in residences.
The largest potential savings are in the hottest and coldest climates. As new air enters homes through leaks and cracks, it has to be cooled or heated. Although the trend has been towards building tighter houses, Logue says the science is still not settled on the best ways to minimize leaks. "More research is needed to figure out what are the most effective ways to weatherize," she said. "There are still benefits to be gained if we can figure out how to weatherize more effectively."
The Berkeley Lab researchers considered five levels of tightening: "average" tightening, "advanced" tightening, the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) standard, the R2000 standard (common in Canada, tighter than IECC) and the "passive house" standard, the tightest and most difficult to achieve.
They found that upgrading all homes to be as airtight as the top 10 percent of similar homes (advanced tightening) would decrease energy demand by 2.6 quads annuallyout of the total 22 quads of source energy used by the residential housing sectorleading to roughly $22 billion in savings in energy bills. Reaching the IECC standard would yield savings of 3.83 quads in annual source energy, yielding $33 billion in savings.
The study found that the IECC standard offered most of the benefit that the tighter standards would yield. Moreover this standard is likely more achievable than the tighter standards. According to their analysis, raising the U.S. housing stock to the IECC standard would reduce airflow in homes by a median value of 50 percent.
"As we move forward and look to build better housing stock, we want to know what standards we should enforce," Logue said. "It looks like the IECC standard gets us the majority of the benefit of air sealing. More research is needed to determine the costs of implementing each of these standards in new homes to see which are cost-effective. As we get better at air sealing, we can move towards tighter envelopes in buildings. "
The analysis in the study factored in the energy costs of increasing ventilation where necessary to maintain good indoor air quality. A separate analysis looked at the energy cost of only bringing the housing stock into compliance with ASHRAE 62.2, a national ventilation standard for homes that ensures sufficient ventilation for human health.
"We found that the energy burden would be pretty small, only about an additional 0.2 quads of source energy annually"less than 0.1 percent of total source energy that goes to the residential housing sector"to get everyone to the level where they're getting enough whole-house ventilation," Logue said.
###
Funding for this study came from the Department of Energy, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the California Energy Commission.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit http://www.lbl.gov.
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