Articles from "The Conversation" 2013

[KichigaiNeko]

In response to the "there is very little to read/ learn" here are some items from The Conversation" to entertain you on this fine sunny Sunday (here in Oz)

This looks promising.....
24 April 2013, 2.22pm AEST
Scientists grow fuel from E.coli tummy bug

A diesel-style fuel has been created from a modified version of the Escherichia coli bacteria, the tummy bug that causes Bali belly.

A new study, published in the journal PNAS and conducted by researchers from the University of Exeter and the Shell Technology Centre Thornton in the UK, aimed to produce a fuel that could be used in transport and did not require complicated production process.

By isolating genes from several different bacteria and putting them together in E.coli, the authors were able to produce a bacteria that converted free fatty acids to hydrocarbons.

Under certain conditions, the E.coli bacteria was able to pro

http://theconversation.com/scientists-gr...-bug-13689

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A Flow -on from previous threads regarding this...
27 April 2013, 1.24pm AEST
Beyond light bulbs: individual responsibility and climate action

My research with Australian Climate Action Groups suggests that such strategies will continue to fail until we overcome the social and institutional barriers stopping individuals from making more significant changes.

I identified three barriers:

disempowerment
lack of trust in politicians and political institutions
inability to reflect on the root causes of climate change (in effect, our systems of production and consumption that have ignored nature’s limits).

http://theconversation.com/beyond-light-...tion-12184

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26 April 2013, 1.46pm AEST
Dressing the part: women, power, fashion – and that bloody jacket!

As a garment conceived to give form to the human silhouette, the jacket expresses a relationship between form and formality; and as a staple item of business attire, it is a mandatory part of the western male dress code for formal occasions. Women have other options, but women in prominent political roles have generally resisted exploring them. There is a feminist issue here, though not the one that was running in the blog lines about the exchanges on Q&A. The earnest principle that professional women should not have to deal with a primary focus on their appearance has become over familiar, and Greer was deliberately flouting it, but in doing so she may have touched on a more interesting question: a question about the relationship between male and female dress codes and the ways in which power roles are culturally defined.

http://theconversation.com/dressing-the-...cket-13659

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27 April 2013, 8.33am AEST
No evidence H7N9 spreads between humans – but fear does

One of the world’s leading flu experts at the World Health Organization (WHO) has labelled H7N9 as one of the most lethal influenza viruses so far encountered. And a number of experts are now claiming the virus may be more transmissible to humans than previous strains of bird flu.

Over the past month, the Chinese poultry industry had taken a huge hit losing more than 10 billion yuan (A$1.57 billion) as it laboured to survive under major campaigns to slaughter thousands of birds and close many poultry markets. In parts of Eastern China poultry consumption has fallen by more than 50% and chicken prices have plummeted.

Unlike earlier outbreaks of avian flu, with H7N9 infected birds seem to show no visible signs of illness. Currently the virus also shows no signs of spreading from person to person, but such a transfer cannot yet be ruled out.

http://theconversation.com/no-evidence-h...does-13755

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26 April 2013, 11.56am AEST
Corporate accountability and gutting the US Alien Tort Statute

The US Supreme Court has handed down a landmark decision that will have drawn sighs of relief from corporate boardrooms in Australia and around the world.

Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum was brought by Nigerian citizens (now residing in the United States), alleging that Royal Dutch Petroleum, Shell and their local subsidiary aided and abetted the Nigerian government to commit serious human rights abuses against the local Ogoni people of the oil-rich Niger Delta in the 1990s.

The case was brought under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) – an obscure law that was passed by the first US Congress in 1789 in an effort to combat piracy. The ATS states that US courts:

have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.
In the past two decades, human rights activists rediscovered the little-used ATS and employed it as a means to hold large multi-national corporations accountable for human rights abuses committed in far-flung countries.

http://theconversation.com/corporate-acc...tute-13752

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Curious...

26 April 2013, 6.46am AEST
Australia’s colonisation was no accident, say the numbers

Despite correcting for taphonomic loss, these changes appear to remain, suggesting real change in the data, as opposed to losing older sites through other mechanisms. Two key points of interest came from this analysis:

1) during the Last Glacial Maximum (21-18,000 years ago), populations declined by as much as 60%. Put in modern-day terms, this equates to a loss of about 14 million people across Australia!

2) the population increase began much earlier in the Holocene than previously believed. In general, populations and a range of archaeological finds have always been considered to occur in tandem and in response to the onset of El Niño-Southern Oscillation intensification some 5,000 years ago.

El Niño-Southern Oscillation occurs when temperature variations of a band of water off the western coast of South America cause climate change across the Pacific, including Australia.

The data here suggests these changes may have occurred earlier and we may need to find another mechanism to explain them.

http://theconversation.com/australias-co...bers-13730