Natural Pest Control

A few weeks back we had an issue with Japanese beetles in our garden.  They came in swarms it seemed.  So I did a little research, we are growing everything organically so we did not want to use any pesticides.  I read an article about using a garlic spray, which proved to be effective if you sprayed daily.  All you do is crush several cloves of garlic and let them soak in some water for a few hours, then stain out the garlic pieces and add the water to a spray bottle.  You have to make sure that you spray the plant completely, even under the leaves for it to work.  
Another option is to make a spray with castor oil and water, you probably should not use this on vegetables that you are going to be harvesting soon due to the diuretic effect of castor oil.
The last method we used was just to pic them off by hand.  The tended to clump together on the leaves and you could grab a whole handful of them at one time.  We then threw them into a bucket of water with some dish soap in it.  We used just water at first, but they just swam to the top and flew off.  The dish soap prevented them from doing this.  So those are a few things that we did and they worked really well, especially on the Japenese beetles.

Bhopal Disaster

Overview

In 1984, the accidental release of 40 metric tons of methyl isocyanate from a Union Carbide pesticideplant in the heart of Bhopal, India killed thousands of people and injured hundreds of thousands.

Toxicological Perspective

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The methyl isocyanate poisoning of Bhopal, India had many disastrous consequences. Hundreds of thousands of people were injured and around 15,000 died. The toxicological and environmental problems are ongoing. Due to a lack of political willpower, the toxic waste from the disaster has still not been cleaned up. Higher rates of Cancer and diseases affecting the central nervous system, liver, and kidneys were witnessed. Also, water analysis is poor due to continued contamination from benzene hexachloride and Mercury that persists to this day.

Background

The Union Carbide plant was established in Bhopal in 1969 and it began to produce the insecticide Carbaryl. methyl isocanyte is an ingredient of carbaryl, and on the morning of December 3, 1984, a holding tank containing 43 tons of methyl isocyanate overheated and released the toxic gas. Because methyl isocyanate is heavier than air, it traveled over the ground through the Bhopal city center. The transportation system collapsed, and many people were trampled to death in a mad rush to flee the visible gases. In total, 15,000 people died and 150,000-600,000 people were injured.

The contamination and deaths were a result of numerous factors:

• Recent documents obtained through discovery in the course of a lawsuit against Union Carbide for environmental contamination (before a New York Federal District Court) revealed that Carbide had exported "untested, unproven technology" to the Indian plant. Unlike Union Carbide plants in the USA, its Indian subsidiary plants were not prepared for problems. No action plans had been established to cope with incidents of this magnitude. This included not informing local authorities of the dangers of chemicals used and manufactured at Bhopal.

• Reports issued months before the incident by scientists within the Union Carbide corporation warned of the possibility of an accident almost identical to that which occurred in Bhopal. The reports were ignored outright and never made it to senior staff. Due to falling sales, staff had been laid off and safety checks became less and less frequent.

• Slip-blind plates that would have prevented water from pipes being cleaned from leaking into the MIC tanks via faulty valves were not installed. Their installation had been omitted from the cleaning checklist.

• At the time of the event, the MIC tank refrigeration unit was disabled to save money, and some of its coolant was being used elsewhere. A simple press of a button in the control room would have activated it to at least use the remaining coolant, but this was overlooked by staff.

• The gas scrubber was placed on standby, and therefore did not attempt to clean escaping gases with sodium hydroxide (caustic soda), which may have brought the concentration down to a safe level.

• The water curtain that may have reduced the concentration of the gas was only set to ~13 m and did not reach the gas; it was not designed to contain a leak of such magnitude. Though the audible external alarm was activated to warn the residents of Bhopal, it was quickly silenced to avoid causing panic among the residents. Thus, many continued to sleep, unaware of the unfolding drama, and those that had woken assumed any problem had been sorted out.

• The flare tower used to burn off gases before they are allowed to escape into the air was inoperational pending repairs.

• Doctors and hospitals were not informed of proper treatment methods for MIC gas inhalation. They were told to simply give cough medicine and eyedrops to their patients.

Union Carbide agreed to pay $470 million to the residents of Bhopal. That amount is lower than in the lawsuit and substantially lower than similar Asbestos cases Union Carbide was settling concurrently in the United States. By the end of October 2003, according to the Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation Department, compensation had been awarded to 554,895 people for injuries received and 15,310 survivors of those killed. The average amount to families of the dead was $2,200. Union Carbide also attempted to distance itself from the tragedy by blaming its subsidiary in India and even fabricated stories about a Sikh extremist group and disgruntled former employees bent on sabotaging the plant.

Health Effects Summary for MIC

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Immediate Health Effects  (0-6 months)

• Ocular: Chemosis, redness, watering, ulcers, photophobia
• Respiratory: Distress, pulmonary edema, pneumonitis, pneumothorax
• Gastrointestinal: Persistent diarrhea, anorexia, persistent abdominal pain
• Genetic: Increased chromosomal abnormalities
• Psychological: Neuroses, anxiety states, adjustment reactions
• Neurobehavioral: Impaired audio and visual memory, impaired vigilance attention and response time, Impaired reasoning and spatial ability, impaired psychomotor coordination

Long-term Health Effects

• Ocular: Persistent watering, corneal opacities, chronic conjunctivitis
• Respiratory: Obstructive and restrictive airway disease, decreased lung function
• Reproductive: Increased pregnancy loss, increased infant mortality, decreased placental/fetal weight
• Genetic: Increased chromosomal abnormalities
• Neurobehavioral: Impaired associate learning, motor speed, and precision

External Links

• Bhopal gas disaster's legacy lives on 25 years later (Telegraph.co.uk)

Khadijah Williams: Homeless Teen as American Bootstrap Success Story

Allison McCarthy is currently a graduate student in the Master of Professional Writing program at Chatham University and a freelance writer covering topics on social justice, anti-racism, and feminism(s).  Her short fiction and journalism have been featured in magazines such as Girlistic, Global Comment, ColorsNW, The Baltimore Review, The Write Side-Up, Scribble,JMWW and Dark Sky.  She has recently contributed guest posts to the blogsThe F-Word UK, Girl with Pen and Womanist Musings and an author interview for the LGBT group blog The Bilerico Project.

The headline reads “She Finally Has A Home: Harvard,” highlighting the unlikely narrative to unfold.   The L.A. Times recently profiledKhadijah Williams, an 18-year old African-American senior at Jefferson High School in Los Angeles, who is graduating this month with plans to attend the prestigious Harvard University on a full scholarship this fall.  What makes her story particularly profound is that for “as long as she can remember, Khadijah has floated from shelters to motels to armories along the West Coast with her mother. She has attended 12 schools in 12 years; lived out of garbage bags among pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers.”

Jack and Jill posted a quick hit to this story with an admonition: “I dare you not to have tears after reading this.”  Similarly, The Moderate Voice, a self-described “Internet hub for moderates, centrists, and independents,” wrote that the article produced an emotional reaction in the post’s author, Jerry Remmers.  Remmers also claims that, “In Khadijah’s case, the system worked with help from a benevolent family in Rancho Palos Verdes, a Los Angeles suburb.  Read the entire story and you will agree it is what makes America great, a phrase I seldom use in today’s highly-polarized political environment.” (Emphasis mine)

Her tenacity under incredible hardship absolutely should be praised.  Getting accepted into Harvard University is a feat by itself (considering the school boasts a mere 9.2% acceptance rate).  To do so under life-altering circumstances such as homelessness is nothing short of miraculous.  There ought to be fireworks and a marching band in her honour!  She is clearly a young woman of high intelligence, talent, and strong character.  To have survived L.A.’s notoriously dangerous Skid Row, let alone flourish as Khadijah has, deserves many accolades, kudos, and support. 

Yet, isn’t it telling that her individual story is held up as a shining example of “what makes America great” in 2009?  The rhetoric of this article credits Khadijah for her achievements, yet condemns her family – particularly her mother Chantwuan, who gave birth to Khadijah at the age of 14 – for failing to provide her with adequate care.  Once again, the individual narrative of ONEyoung person’s ability to overcome systemic poverty and lack of resources signifies that it’s somehow an individual choice to live in poverty, suggesting that those who are homeless merely lack the intelligence and wherewithal to overcome their circumstances. 

Khadijah maintains that Chantwuan “tried her best; she never smoked or drank, never did drugs, and she never put us in abusive situations. However, that was the best she could do.” Defying the unfair yet popular stereotype of the lazy/substance-abusing homeless woman, Chantwuan could not escape poverty for herself and her two children, yet somehow she alone is to blame for her family’s situation. Nowhere does the article mention the lack of intervention by Social Services on Khadijah’s behalf.  At the end of the article, Khadijah finds Chantwuan and a younger sister, Jeanine, living out of a “South-Central storage facility… sitting on a garbage bag of clothes,” with “no talk of coming home of for Thanksgiving or Christmas.” 

This raises some serious questions of accountability from the State of California:  Where is the assistance for Khadijah’s family?  Is there nothing that can be done by the state to provide shelter and living assistance for this family living in poverty?  Why is it easier to condemn Chantwuan for being unable to provide these necessities than to ask how the system could fail to help a teen mother and her two daughters?  Do we think it’s enough that Khadijah “rises above” even as her immediate family faces life on the streets?  Using Khadijah’s phenomenal achievements as an example of “what makes America great” shows little consideration for the multiple ways in which many American homeless youth are disenfranchised of educational opportunities.

According to the Fact Sheet “Education of Homeless Children and Youth,” published by The National Coalition for the Homeless in June 2008, homelessness fosters devastating effects on a teenager’s educational opportunities.  Homeless youth are also a rising population, as “Families with children are by most accounts among the fastest growing segments of the homeless population. In the United States today, an estimated 1.35 million children are likely to experience homelessness over the course of a year (The Institute for Children and Poverty, 2004). This number represents two percent of all children in the United States, and ten percent of all poor children in the United States.” The article further notes:

“Residency requirements, guardianship requirements, delays in transfer of school records, lack of transportation, and lack of immunization records often prevent homeless children from enrolling in school. Homeless children and youth who are able to enroll in school still face barriers to regular attendance: while 87% of homeless youth are enrolled in school, only 77% attend school regularly (U.S. Department of Education, 2004)… Homeless youth are often prevented from enrolling in and attending school by curfew laws, liability concerns, and legal guardianship requirements (Anderson et al., 1995).”

These factors are significant systemic issues which cannot be overcome solely through individual effort.  The L.A. Times article continually references the numerous teachers, guidance counsellors, and networking programs Khadijah reached out to in order to achieve academic success.  Yet these efforts do not extend to a wide net of homeless youth in need of educational resources.  Although Khadijah will go on to pursue a career as an education attorney, are the aspirations of other homeless teens being similarly encouraged – or do the cycles of poverty continue, as they have for her young sister, Jeanine? 

It isn’t enough to shed a few tears of pride for Khadijah Williams while subscribing to false notions of a balanced educational meritocracy.  Class divisions which lead to inhumane living conditions, educational imbalances, and inter-generational poverty must be addressed, particularly in our struggling economy, or we risk losing the talents and contributions of our homeless populations.  

Sources:

From Homeless To Harvard (And Beyond): Khadijah Williams Starts New Life In NYC (VIDEO)

Homeless Girl Finally Has a Home: Harvard

The Ayes of Texas

 State Capitol, Texas — Presidential candidate G.W. Bush prides himself on presiding over 121 executions with perfect oversight. State representative Tim Moore wanted to show how careful the legislative process was in the state. He sponsored a bill praising Albert Salvo, a man whose "unconventional techniques involving population control and applied psychology" had already been noted by the state of Massachusetts. The Texas politicians, never wanting to be outdone by any state, unanimously passed a resolution praising Albert Salvo. Salvo is better known as The Boston Strangler. 

Representative Tim Moore sponsored a resolution in the Texas House of Representatives in Austin, Texas calling on the House to commend Albert de Salvo for his unselfish service to "his country, his state and his community." The resolution stated that "this compassionate gentleman's dedication and devotion to his work has enabled the weak and the lonely throughout the nation to achieve and maintain a new degree of concern for their future. He has been officially recognized by the state of Massachusetts for his noted activities and unconventional techniques involving population control and applied psychology." The resolution was passed unanimously. Representative Moore then revealed that he had only tabled the motion to show how the legislature passes bills and resolutions often without reading them or understanding what they say. Albert de Salvo was the Boston Strangler.



Back in 1971, Rep. Tom (not "Tim") Moore, Jr. of Waco, Texas — knowing that his fellow legislators in the Texas House of Representatives often passed bills and resolutions without fully reading or understanding them — pulled an April Fool's joke on the House by sponsoring a resolution commending Albert de Salvo for his unselfish service to "his county, his state and his community." The resolution read, in part:

This compassionate gentleman's dedication and devotion to his work has enabled the weak and the lonely throughout the nation to achieve and maintain a new degree of concern for their future. He has been officially recognized by the state of Massachusetts for his noted activities and unconventional techniques involving population control and applied psychology.

The joke, of course, was that Albert de Salvo was more commonly known as the Boston Strangler, assumed to be responsible for the murders of thirteen women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964. (Technically, de Salvo was never convicted or put on trial for any of those killings — he was sentenced to life in prison for sexual assaults on several other women and confessed to the thirteen murders as well. He was stabbed to death in prison in 1973, and whether he actually committed the murders he confessed to has been a subject of controversy ever since.) As he expected, Rep. Moore saw his resolution passed unanimously; he then withdrew it and explained that he had offered the motion only to demonstrate a point. (A bit of sardonic humor offered at the time claimed that perhaps Moore was wrong: maybe the legislators had been paying 
attention.) 

Although we would hope our elected representatives would pay enough attention to their jobs not to pass resolutions commending murderers, that Moore's stunt succeeded wasn't necessarily as outrageous as it might seem. Federal and state legislators see a steady stream of resolutions that have no real legal impact and are offered mostly as public relations measures on behalf of one group or another. Poring over each and every one would take an inordinate amount of a legislator's time (especially in states like Texas where the legislature might be in session only relatively briefly and infrequently, creating a large number of bills and resolutions to be voted upon in a very short time). If a fellow legislator introduces a resolution to honor some favored person or group, you're expected to rubber stamp it as a gesture of good will — after all, you'll want him to return the favor when you need to boost your popularity with your constituents by extending similar honors to some of them. 

The invocation of then-Texas governor George W. Bush's name at the beginning of the 2000 example quoted above made little sense other than as a pre-presidential election attempt to malign him by linking his name to an absurd piece of legislative business, as Rep. Moore'sresolution was introduced many years before Bush was first elected governor of Texas. 

Sources:
Tom Moore Jr
Source from Wikipedia
               

What Space Smells Like

When astronauts return from space walks and remove their helmets, they are welcomed back with a peculiar smell. An odor that is distinct and weird: something, astronauts have described it, like "seared steak." And also: "hot metal." And also: "welding fumes." 

Our extraterrestrial explorers are remarkably consistent in describing Space Scent in meaty-metallic terms. "Space," astronaut Tony Antonelli has said, "definitely has a smell that's different than anything else." Space, three-time spacewalker Thomas Jones has put it, "carries a distinct odor of ozone, a faint acrid smell." 

Space, Jones elaborated, smells a little like gunpowder. It is "sulfurous."

Add to all those anecdotal assessments the recent discovery, in a vast dust cloud at the center of our galaxy, of ethyl formate -- and the fact that the ester is, among other things, the chemical responsible for the flavor of raspberries. Add to that the fact that ethyl formate itself smells like rum. Put all that together, and one thing becomes clear: The final frontier sort of stinks.

But ... how does it stink, exactly? It turns out that we, and more specifically our atmosphere, are the ones who give space its special spice. According to one researcher, the aroma astronauts inhale as they move their mass from space to station is the result of "high-energy vibrations in particles brought back inside which mix with the air." 

In the past, NASA has been interested in reproducing that smell for training purposes -- the better to help preemptively acclimate astronauts to the odors of the extra-atmospheric environment. And the better to help minimize the sensory surprises they'll encounter once they're there. The agency, in 2008, talked with the scent chemist Steve Pearce about the possibility of recreating space stench, as much as possible, here on earth.*

Pearce came to NASA's attention after he recreated, for an art installation on "Impossible Smells," the scents of the Mir space station. (This was, he noted, a feat made more complicated by the fact that cosmonauts tend to bring vodka with them into space -- which affects not only the scent of their breath, but also that of their perspiration.) The result of Pearce's efforts? "Just imagine sweaty feet and stale body odor, mix that odor with nail polish remover and gasoline ... then you get close!"

Those efforts, alas, did not move forward. But had Pearce continued in creating a NASA-commissioned eau de vacuum, he would have had the aid of wonderfully poetic descriptions provided by astronauts themselves. Such as, for example,this sweet-smelling stuff from wonder-astronaut Don Pettit: 

"Each time, when I repressed the airlock, opened the hatch and welcomed two tired workers inside, a peculiar odor tickled my olfactory senses," Pettit recalled. "At first I couldn't quite place it. It must have come from the air ducts that re-pressed the compartment. Then I noticed that this smell was on their suit, helmet, gloves, and tools. It was more pronounced on fabrics than on metal or plastic surfaces."

He concluded:

It is hard to describe this smell; it is definitely not the olfactory equivalent to describing the palette sensations of some new food as "tastes like chicken." The best description I can come up with is metallic; a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation. It reminded me of my college summers where I labored for many hours with an arc welding torch repairing heavy equipment for a small logging outfit. It reminded me of pleasant sweet smelling welding fumes. That is the smell of space.

Sources:
Space smells like seared steak, hot metal, astronauts report

Why we swing our arms when we walk

Why people swing their arms as they walk, a seemingly unnecessary movement for which researchers have tried to find an explanation.

The research, detailed today in theProceedings of the Royal Society B, used simple robots and human experiments to show that arm swinging is both easy and beneficial. The movement requires little muscular effort, yet it makes walking much easier.

“This puts to rest the theory that arm swinging is a vestigial relic from our quadrupedal ancestors,” said Steven Collins, a biomechanical engineer with the University of Michigan in the USA. “Instead, arm swinging is a sensible part of an economic gait on two legs.”

Walking machines

The 'passive dynamic walking machine' used in the experiments. Credit: University of Michigan

Collins first became interested in the role of arm swinging through his work with walking robots, which he uses to test ideas about human locomotion. He works with ‘passive dynamic machines’, which walk down a small incline without any power source, as well as robots that use motor-driven springs to push off the ground.

However, the first machines had trouble walking without arms, tending to spin and fall. When Collins and his colleagues added free-swinging arms to the machines, they moved in a way similar to human arms.

The researchers designed an experiment to determine the purpose of this arm swinging. They had 10 people use their arms in different ways as they walked: either swinging normally, held at their sides, bound to their sides or moving out of sync to the walking.

They measured the effort required from the shoulder muscles, as well as the effort of walking overall, which was quantified as metabolic cost.

Tendency to spin

The results showed that arm swinging, either normally or in the opposite direction, required little effort from the muscles. “Instead of being muscle-driven,” Collins said, “arm swinging appears to arise from the natural dynamics, or passive dynamics, of the body as it walks.”

The experiments also showed that keeping the arms steady increased the effort of walking by 12%, the equivalent of walking 20% faster or carrying a 10 kg backpack. When the arms were bound at the sides, not as much effort was needed, which suggests that holding the arms down requires more exertion that letting them swing.

But forcing the arms to swing out of sync increased the effort of walking even more. The researchers’ explanation, which they developed by observing the walking robots, is that this alternate movement makes legs work twice as hard to prevent your body from spinning.

Collins explained: “during a step your legs try to make your body spin about a vertical axis… in a motion resembling pirouetting ballerina.”

Swinging arms in the normal direction cancels this out, meaning leg muscles don’t have to counter the spinning tendency. However, swinging arms in the opposite direction doubles-up on the spin; as a result, your leg muscles must work twice as hard to keep from turning.

Collins hopes to use these findings about arm swinging to design more efficient walking robots. In addition, he said they could have future applications for physical therapy.

David Lloyd, director of the University of Western Australia’s Gait Laboratory, in Perth, said the paper “clearly shows what role the arms’ swing has in normal gait.”

He added that some neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease and cerebral palsy, cause constrained or opposite arm motion. This abnormal movement negatively affects sufferers’ walking balance and energy expenditure.

Sources:-

Swing your arms while walking, or else!