HELSINKI, FINLAND — Finland's tiny navy had a couple days of extreme excitement late last month, when its little coast guard cutters scoured the entrance to Helsinki Bay to catch what officials remain certain was a foreign submarine intruder. The Finnish military subsequently announced that they had located the interloper, lurking within sight of downtown Helsinki, and shooed it off with small, warning depth charges.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2015/0519/As-Russian-bear-stirs-Finland-reconsiders-its-neutrality?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Daily&utm_campaign=20150520_Newsletter%3ADaily&utm_content=B&cmpid=ema%3Anws%3ADaily_UMP%2805-20-2015%29
Scratches to Sketches
Wednesday 20 May 2015
Hidden History of Leaded Gasoline Reveals Industry Conspiracy to Conceal Dangers - Lethal Product Still Marketed Throughout World
NEW YORK - The makers of leaded gasoline systematically suppressed information about the severe health hazards of their product for decades, even though they knew from the mid-1920s on that leaded gasoline was a public health menace, according to an investigative article published in the March 20 issue of The Nation, available in bookstores and on newsstands March 7. Moreover, both the auto and oil industries, as well as the makers of lead additive, knew from the early 1900s that safe anti-knock substitutes were cheaply available, but rejected them because they would be unprofitable. For years, according to automotive journalist Jamie Kitman, who researched and wrote the article, these manufacturers wildly exaggerated the benefits of leaded gasoline while downplaying or outright denying its dangers.
https://www.lead.org.au/lanv8n1/l8v1-3.html
https://www.lead.org.au/lanv8n1/l8v1-3.html
Physical Review Letters - The Physical Review Journals Celebrate the International Year of Light
2015 has been designated the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies by UNESCO. This global initiative aims to highlight the importance of light in our everyday lives and how it has contributed to the development of society. To celebrate this yearlong event, the editors of the Physical Review journals have organized a collection of papers that represent important breakthroughs in the field of optics, from fundamental insights into how light behaves, to findings that were critical in the development of everyday technologies. These papers will be free to read throughout 2015.
Quantum physics: What is really real? : Nature News & Comment
Ever since they invented quantum theory in the early 1900s, explains Maroney, who is himself a physicist at the University of Oxford, UK, they have been talking about how strange it is — how it allows particles and atoms to move in many directions at once, for example, or to spin clockwise and anticlockwise simultaneously. But talk is not proof, says Maroney. "If we tell the public that quantum theory is weird, we better go out and test that's actually true," he says. "Otherwise we're not doing science, we're just explaining some funny squiggles on a blackboard."
It is this sentiment that has led Maroney and others to develop a new series of experiments to uncover the nature of the wavefunction — the mysterious entity that lies at the heart of quantum weirdness. On paper, the wavefunction is simply a mathematical object that physicists denote with the Greek letter psi (Ψ) — one of Maroney's funny squiggles — and use to describe a particle's quantum behaviour. Depending on the experiment, the wavefunction allows them to calculate the probability of observing an electron at any particular location, or the chances that its spin is oriented up or down. But the mathematics shed no light on what a wavefunction truly is. Is it a physical thing? Or just a calculating tool for handling an observer's ignorance about the world?
http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-physics-what-is-really-real-1.17585Indian Ocean may be key to global warming 'hiatus' : Nature News & Comment
So Lee's team used a computer model to explore the fate of the ocean's 'missing heat'. The results suggest that easterly trade winds have strengthened during the hiatus, causing warm water to pile up in the western Pacific. The water seeps between the islands of Indonesia and into the Indian Ocean, bringing heat with it.
In the model, this surge of water produces dramatic warming in the upper Indian Ocean starting in the early 2000s, in agreement with the WOA data, the authors write. This explanation also fits with measurements of flow through the largest Indonesian channel — the Makassar Strait — which increased over the same period of time.
http://www.nature.com/news/indian-ocean-may-be-key-to-global-warming-hiatus-1.17505Do more, more urgently on global warming, say Merkel, Hollande | Daily Mail Online
BERLIN, May 19 (Reuters) - More urgent and ambitious action is needed if the world wants to meet its commitment of limiting the rise in average global temperatures to two degrees Celsius, the leaders of Germany and France said on Tuesday.
Addressing environment ministers in Berlin, Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande called on other nations to submit clear formal promises on cutting greenhouse gases ahead of a year-end United Nations summit in Paris aimed at achieving a new worldwide deal on global warming.
"We will see in Paris that more engagement is needed to really achieve the two degrees goal than what we currently have on the table," Merkel said in a speech to the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, which she set up in 2010 to allow for informal discussions ahead of larger U.N. meetings after the failure of climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009.
Merkel believes industrialised nations need to commit funds to help developing countries cope with the side effects of climate change like flooding and drought if they want poorer countries to back a global deal.
She said Germany aimed to double its climate financing by 2020 compared to 2014, by doubling aid from its budget to 4 billion euros ($4.48 billion) annually and increasing funds available from KfW state development bank to 3 billion euros.
Rich nations have committed to mobilise by 2020 an annual $100 billion in climate finance that is "new and additional" to existing funding. However, only around $10 billion has been pledged so far.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-3087719/Do-more-urgently-global-warming-say-Merkel-Hollande.html#ixzz3ahHZVUlP
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Sketches from scratches is a provocative blogspot that has grown out of the Wuh Lax experience. It is eclectic, which means that it might consider just about anything from the simple to the extremely difficult. A scratch can be something that is troubling me or a short line on paper. From a scratch comes a verbal sketch or image sketch of the issue or subject. Other sites have other stuff that should really be of interest to the broad reader. I try to develop themes, but variety often comes before depth.
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