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All around the park, there are large amphitheaters where cover bands play music from all decades of the Cold War. An immersive cultural experience where kids can hear music they may have never experienced before

Oak Ridge Associated Universities has received a new five-year, $23 million contract to manage the Department of Energy's National Supplemental Screening Program. ORAU has managed the health screening program for the past 10 years. The screenings are free for former workers at DOE sites who may have been exposed to hazardous chemicals and radioactive materials in…

Presidents and diplomats aren't the only ones calling for climate action at the United Nations. During the opening ceremony of today's climate summit, ​Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner—a 26-year-old poet from the Marshall Islands—spoke eloquently about the threat that rising seas pose to her country. Jetnil-Kijiner warned delegates of the high price of inaction and described the current challenge as a "race to save humanity." "Those of us from Oceania are already experiencing it first hand," she said. "We've seen waves crashing into our homes…We look at our children and wonder how they will know themselves or their culture should we lose our islands." "We need a radical change of course," she added. "It means ending carbon pollution within my lifetime. It means supporting those of us most affected to prepare for unavoidable climate impacts. And it means taking responsibility for irreversible loss and damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions." You can read more about Jetnil-Kijiner here. Video via TckTckTck.

still poisoning insects Fukushima radiation still poisoning insects September 23, 2014 Japan Fukushima, Insects, Mutations, Poisoning, Radiation Wataru Taira and Joji M. Otaki/University of the Ryukyus Larvae of pale grass blue butterflies died prematurely or developed abnormalities when fed radioactive leaves from the Fukushima region. 22 September 2014 By Dennis Normile Eating food contaminated with radioactive particles may be more perilous than thought—at least for insects. Butterfly larvae fed even slightly tainted leaves collected near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station were more likely to suffer physical abnormalities and low survival rates than those fed uncontaminated foliage, a new study finds. The research suggests that the environment in the Fukushima region, particularly in areas off-limits to humans because of safety concerns, will remain dangerous for wildlife for some time. The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station disaster released massive amounts of radiation, much of which drifted out to sea. Humans were evacuated to safety and their exposure to radiation was minimal. But local wildlife were exposed both externally to radiation in the environment and internally from contaminated food sources. Joji Otaki, a biologist at University of the Ryukyus in Nishihara, Japan, and his colleagues have been conducting field studies and lab experiments on how such radiation affected the pale grass blue butterfly (Zizeeria maha), a species found throughout most of Japan. In a previous experiment, Otaki’s group fed butterfly larvae leaves of the creeping woodsorrel (Oxalis corniculata) with radiation in the thousands of becquerels per kilogram (Bq/kg) gathered near the power plant within a few months after the accident. (For comparison, the Japanese government set a limit of 100 Bq/kg for human consumption of rice, meat, and fish, and 50 Bq/kg for milk and infant formula.) Larvae that dined on the radiation-drenched leaves had low survival rates and high incidences of physical abnormalities such as unusually small forewings. These results corroborated field surveys by others that turned up fewer butterflies in contaminated areas than would normally be expected. The new study shows that radiation can damage larvae even at much lower concentrations. Otaki and colleagues collected leaves 16 to 20 months after the accident, after short-lived radioactive contamination had decayed, but this time from locations ranging from 59 to 1760 kilometers from the power plant; contamination levels ranged from 161 to 0.2 Bq/kg. They found that as contamination increased, mortality rates and incidences of abnormalities increased. “These results suggest that low-dose ingestion of approximately 100 Bq/kg may be seriously toxic to certain organisms,” the team writes in a paper published today in BMC Evolutionary Biology. In another experiment, the researchers divided offspring of the butterflies into two groups, feeding larvae either the same contaminated leaves their parents had eaten or uncontaminated leaves. Larvae fed the contaminated leaves had even lower survival rates and more abnormalities than their parents, whereas those feeding on clean leaves largely reverted to near-normal in both mortality rates and frequency of abnormalities. The findings from Otaki’s group are “groundbreaking,” says Timothy Mousseau, a biologist at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, who also studies the effects of radiation on wildlife near Fukushima and Chernobyl. He notes that there have been “almost no studies” on how ingestion of radiation-tainted foods affect wildlife. Still, Mousseau cautions that the results should not be directly extrapolated to humans. “I think butterflies as a group are likely to be much more sensitive than humans to radiocontaminants,” he says. He adds that Otaki’s findings suggest that insects that survive after eating contaminated leaves might evolve tolerance to the low levels of radiation likely to persist in the Fukushima region for decades. Source: Science AAAS https://wordpress.com/read/post/id/73563717/498/ http://news.sciencemag.org/asiapacific/2014/09/fukushima-radiation-still-poisoning-insects

http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/06/20/so-there-was-a-secret-government-torture-facility-on-londons-billionaires-row/on Vault Life is Messy Nostalgia  So there was a Secret Government Torture Facility on London’s Billionaires Row By MessyNessy 20th Jun, 2013  7 Princess Diana lived next door in Kensington Palace, thousands flock to bustling Portobello market in search of past treasures just down the road, but this one has been left out of the guide books. The “London Cage”, a hidden WWII Guantanamo-esque compound on the most expensive street in London, Kensington Palace Gardens, was kept secret from the British public for nearly sixty years. Vice magazine has resurfaced an article written by Guardian journalist Ian Cobain in 2005, until which time, the existence of the Cage and what went on there, had been never been publicly uncovered. Here is the low-down on the London Cage… Where: Number 6, 7 and 8 Kensington Palace Gardens in Kensington, London. Today these three 19th century mansions have since been occupied by the Russian embassy, the Sultan of Brunei and the owner of Chelsea football club, Roman Abramovich. Neighbouring residents at the time would have included the Rothschild family. When: Between July 1940 and September 1948. What: Run by MI19, the section of the War Office, the London Cage existed first as an “interrogation centre” and then as the war crimes “investigation unit”. What went on behind these closed doors was in no way consistent with the Geneva convention or Britain’s post-war “no torture policy”. Prisoners of war were tortured there using various methods, including sleep deprivation, starvation, beatings, electric shock, induced hypothermia to name a few. The Cage had space for 60 prisoners at any time, and five interrogation rooms. It’s claimed local police were called in on occasion by neighboring residents to inquire about the mysterious cries of men coming from number 6, 7, and 8 Kensington Palace Gardens. A page from Lt. Col Alexander Scotland’s memoirs, the head of the clandestine facility and denied all allegations of torture at the London Cage until his death in 1965. Who: As many as 3,573 enemy prisoner of war soldiers are believed to have been held at the London Cage between 1940 and 1948, including some of WWII’s most notorious Nazi SS soldiers, each responsible for the death of thousands, on the battlefield and of course at Nazi concentration camps. More than 1,000 POWs at the London Cage were persuaded to give statements about war crimes committed. Lt. Col Alexander Scotland was head of the clandestine facility and denied all allegations of torture at the London Cage until his death in 1965. During his post, he refused Red Cross inspections, claiming his guests were either civilians or criminals and therefore, not protected by the post-war Geneva convention. Around ten officers served under him at the Cage as well as a dozen interrogators and interpreters. In a detailed letter of complaint from one prisoner, SS captain Fritz Knoechlein, uncovered by the Guardian in the National Archives, the Cage POW notes that his interrogators “boasted that they were ‘much better’ than the ‘Gestapo in Alexanderplatz’.” … While Nazi SS officers who ended up at the Cage aren’t likely to be getting any sympathy from us, the story raises the question: at a time when our governments seem to be hiding more from us than ever before, what sort of secret “above-the-law” facilities might be hiding in our cities today? Read the full investigation on the Guardian and see more photographs from the memoirs of Lt. Col Alexander Scotland at Vice magazine. ::: YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: