Radiation spikes around Chernobyl after Russian invasion of Ukraine

Graph showing a spike in gamma radiation at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on 24 February 2022, after Russian military forces invaded Ukraine on a manufactured pretext. The spike was likely due to the movement of heavy military equipment in the area lifting radioactive dust into the air. The measured value is 54,200 nSv/hour. Graphic: SSE Ecocentre / SaveEcoBot

February 25, 2022

Radiation spikes around Chernobyl after Russian invasion of Ukraine

By Matt Mathers 25 February 2022 (The Independent) – Radiation at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has exceeded control levels after Russia troops took control of the area, Ukraine has said. Data from the automated radiation monitoring system of the exclusion zone, which is available online, indicate that the control levels of gamma radiation dose […]

February 23, 2022

Graph of the Day: U.S. COVID-19 vaccinations by partisan lean, February 2021 – February 2022

By Charles Gaba 22 February 2022 (ACA Signups) – Last summer, I pulled together the occasional vaccination rate scatter plot graphs I’d been compiling for months into a single animated GIF image to show how both the correlation (R^2) and steepness (slope) of the partisan COVID vaccination divide grew from almost nothing at all to a gaping […]

A man stands on the roof of a house in Colonia El Carmen as a red glare emanates from flares dotted around the Cactus gas processing center, run by state oil company Pemex, in Reforma municipality in Chiapas, Mexico. Photo: Edgard Garrido / REUTERS

February 23, 2022

Gas flaring soars in Mexico, derailing its climate change pledges as it seeks to boost oil output – “It’s like hell”

By Stefanie Eschenbacher 23 February 2022 (Reuters) – It never gets completely dark in Colonia El Carmen, home to Mexico’s largest natural gas processing center, in the poor southern state of Chiapas. After sunset, a red glare emanates from flares dotted around the Cactus gas processing center, run by state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex). […]

(a) Total, (b) global, (c) linear, and (d) regional and local nonlinear sea-level rise (SLR) rates for three sites (New Jersey, Cheesequake; Florida, Nassau; Scotland, Kyle of Tongue) are shown with the time of emergence for each site. Model predictions are the mean with 1σ uncertainty. Note variable y-axes. Graphic: Walker, et al., 2022 / Nature Communications

February 21, 2022

Onset of modern sea level rise began in 1863, international study finds – “We can be virtually certain the global rate of sea-level rise from 1940 to 2000 was faster than all previous 60-year intervals over the last 2,000 years”

18 February 2022 (Rutgers University) – An international team of scientists including Rutgers researchers has found that modern rates of sea level rise began emerging in 1863 as the Industrial Age intensified, coinciding with evidence for early ocean warming and glacier melt. The study, which used a global database of sea-level records spanning the last […]

Cattle gather next to a column of fire in Santo Tome, Corrientes province, Argentina, on Sunday, 20 February 2022. Fires continue to ravage the Corrientes province that has burnt more than a half-million hectares. Photo: Rodrigo Abd / AP Photo

February 21, 2022

Wildfires ravage northern Argentina – “It never happened to us, we never lived something like this”

By Victor Caivano 21 February 2022 CORRIENTES, Argentina (AP) – Wildfires that have been ravaging northern Argentina for several weeks advanced relentlessly Sunday, although the light rains that began over the weekend gave some hope to firefighters. Corrientes province is the most affected area, where officials said at least eight separate fires continued to burn […]

Weekly average count of “hospital onset” COVID-19 patients in the United States, April 2020 - February 2022. During the Omicron wave, more patients than ever caught COVID-19 at hospitals (nosocomial infections). Data: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Graphic: Allan James Vestal / POLITICO

February 19, 2022

Nowhere is safe: Record number of patients contracted Covid in the hospital in January 2022

By Rachael Levy and Allan James Vestal19 February 2022 (Politico) – More than 3,000 hospitalized patients each week in January had caught Covid sometime during their stay, more than any point of the pandemic, according to U.S. government data analyzed by POLITICO. The record surge demonstrates the virulence of the Omicron variant and how even […]

Generational wealth gap in the United States, 1989-2020. In 1998, the American population under 40 years old held 13.1 percent of America’s total wealth. In 2020, those under 40 hold only 6 percent of the total wealth. This means that millennials and Generation X own less than half of the wealth that older generations owned when they were the same age. Graphic: Self Financial, Inc.

February 19, 2022

Graph of the Day: Generational wealth gap in the United States, 1989-2020

20 December 2021 (Self Financial) – In 2021, the average net worth in an American household aged 64-75 reached over $1.2m [1], while the average household under 35 had a net worth of just $76k. With these massive generational wealth gaps, Self decided to dig deeper into the historical wealth distribution of different generations to understand […]

Maps showing regional sea level linear rates of rise (mm/year) from satellite altimetry over three different time periods: (a) 1993–2006, (b) 2007–2020, and (c) 1993–2020. Linear rates of change of relative sea level (ocean and land height changes) from tide gauges over the same time period are also shown (circles). Graphic: Sweet, et al., 2022 / NOAA

February 19, 2022

U.S. coastline to see up to a foot of sea level rise by 2050 – Report projects a century of sea level rise in 30 years – “These numbers mean a change from a single flooding event every 2-5 years to multiple events each year”

15 February 2022 (NOAA) – The United States is expected to experience as much sea level rise by the year 2050 as it witnessed in the previous hundred years. That’s according to a NOAA-led report updating sea level rise decision-support information for the U.S. released today in partnership with half a dozen other federal agencies. […]

The body of the last freshwater Irrawaddy dolphin in northeastern Cambodia is examined by Department of Fisheries Conservation staff, 15 February 2022. The dolphin was entangled in fishing net and drowned. The Fisheries Administration, in cooperation with WWF-Cambodia, will erect a dolphin statue at the bank of Mekong River at Anlong Chheuteal to commemorate its existence there. Photo: Phen Rattanak / AKP

February 18, 2022

Last freshwater Irrawaddy dolphin in northeastern Cambodia entangled in fishing net and dies – Statue to be erected on bank of Mekong River to commemorate its existence

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, 16 February 2022 (AP) – The last surviving freshwater Irrawaddy dolphin on a stretch of the Mekong River in northeastern Cambodia has died, apparently after getting tangled in a fishing net, wildlife officials said Wednesday. The aquatic mammal was found dead Tuesday on a riverbank in Stung Treng province, near the border […]

Phytohormone pools affected by GBH, phosphate fertilizer and their combination in three crop species. Phytohormones, their precursors and metabolites; compounds that were analyzed in this study are indicated with abbreviations after the compound name. Additional compounds (without abbreviations) were added to show common pathway intermediates and to show biosynthetic origins of phytohormones. Chorismate derives from the shikimate pathway which includes the target site of glyphosate. By blocking the EPSPS enzyme, an essential biosynthetic step is corrupted, which is often shown to cause decreased biosynthesis of metabolites synthesized downstream of the shikimate pathway. Centrally placed hexahedron highlights the possible interactions between hormones also known as hormone crosstalk. Symbols (arrows and stops) besides and below metabolites (left side = oat, right = potato, and below = strawberry) indicate the effect of treatment (blue = phosphate, yellow = GBH, blue + yellow = phosphate + GBH) on each plant species corresponding to significances shown in Figure 2 (N = 40). Graphic: Fuchs, et al., 2022 / Frontiers in Plant Science

February 17, 2022

Glyphosate herbicide residues in soil affect hormone levels in crop plants – “Ubiquitous herbicide residues have multifaceted consequences by modulating the hormonal equilibrium of plants”

14 February 2022 (University of Turku) – A new study finds that glyphosate residues in soil affect phytohormones in aboveground plant parts. Academy of Finland funded postdoctoral researcher Dr. Benjamin Fuchs investigates the effects of herbicide residues in soil on plant physiology and chemical ecology of plant-insect interactions. Glyphosate-based herbicides are commonly used to kill […]

Desdemona Despair

Desdemona Despair