science Tychoxii • 2 weeks ago • 100%

In places where bat populations crashed, farmers sprayed more insecticides, and baby mortality spiked - 05 SEP 2024 - Erik Stokstad https://www.science.org/content/article/my-jaw-dropped-bat-loss-linked-death-human-infants In 2006, bats throughout New England began dying en masse from a mysterious and incurable fungal disease called white nose syndrome. Over the next decade, their populations plummeted—and humans living nearby suffered, according to a new study. With fewer predators around, insect numbers increased, leading to farmers spraying about 31% more pesticides, researchers report this week in Science. At the same time, infant mortality in counties increased by 8%. The authors link those deaths to the rise in the use of insecticides, which are known to be dangerous, especially for fetuses and infants. That link is a “pretty dramatic claim that’s going to get a lot of attention,” says Paul Ferraro, a sustainability scientist at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved with the new work. The study, he says, is the “most convincing evidence to date” linking economic and health impacts with dramatic losses of a wild species. Bats are good to have around a farm. They provide free pest control, with some species consuming 40% of their body weight each night in insects. The value of this service has been estimated at between $4 billion and $53 billion per year. So, it’s logical to assume farmers might compensate for a loss of bats by spraying more insecticides, says Winifred Frick, chief scientist at Bat Conservation International. Making a watertight case for that assumption, however, isn’t easy. Eyal Frank, an economist at the University of Chicago, realized that the decline of bat populations due to white nose syndrome presented a kind of natural experiment. Because the disease appeared suddenly and spread rapidly, Frank could compare outcomes in counties where bat populations plummeted with those in similar counties that had not yet been struck. In the first year after an area was hit by the disease, farmers tended to spray an extra kilogram of insecticide per square kilometer, Frank found. After 5 years, they were spraying 2 kilograms more than before—a 31% increase on average. At the same time, fungicide and herbicide rates did not increase, suggesting the need for more intensive insect control drove the insecticide change. Frank also looked at infant mortality in all the counties. In places where the bat populations had crashed, deaths due to accident or homicides stayed the same. But other deaths, such as those caused by disease or birth defects, rose 8%. In counties with healthy bat populations, the numbers didn’t shift one way or another. “My jaw dropped,” Frick says. Several lines of evidence connect pesticides and other agrochemicals to human health risks. Although government regulators assess the potential dangers of these compounds before approving them—and set safety guidelines for their use—farm workers and bystanders can still get exposed when these compounds drift away from a farm or end up in groundwater. Epidemiological studies have linked certain compounds to developmental problems in infants and children, for example. Insecticides, which are often neurotoxic, are often of particular concern. The increase in deaths is “huge,” says Tracey Woodruff, an environmental health scientist at the University of California San Francisco. The connection is plausible and concerning, she says. In an earlier study, she found an increase in infant mortality of similar magnitude due to worsening air pollution. But a puzzling fact about the new study is that other aspects of infant health, such as birth weight, did not correlate with the bat declines. Still, other confounding factors might have contributed to the rise in mortality, Ferraro notes. “I wouldn’t change public policy based on this one study.” Frick says there are signs that some populations of bats are beginning to recover, but it could take decades to return to their previous abundance. Her organization is trying to help by setting up lights to attract more insects to winter hibernation sites to make sure bats are eating their fill. Other conservationists are experimenting with changing ventilation of abandoned mines to make their temperature more favorable to roosting bats. Meanwhile, the fungus that causes white nose Syndrome continues to spread into the western United States, including California, a major agricultural region. doi: 10.1126/science.zu56w28

news Tychoxii • 2 weeks ago • 100%

Stefania Prandi in Foggia, Deepa Parent and Tom Levitt Tue 27 Aug 2024 07.30 CEST https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/aug/27/indian-migrant-worker-death-heat-stress-italy Italy has been shocked by reports of the “brutal” treatment of migrants working on farms across the country and the death of a flower picker in temperatures of about 40C (104F). Tens of thousands of migrants have been taking to fields to pick tomatoes and other crops across Italy at the same time as the country has been engulfed in consecutive heatwaves since the middle of June. The Italian Meteorological Society said average summer temperatures in Italy between June and August have increased by 1.5C over the past 30 years, from 1994 to 2023. Sweltering heat has brought a new and deadly risk to low-paid workers toiling outdoors to pick fruit and vegetables. Dalvir Singh, who worked on a flower farm, is thought to have died from a combination of extreme summer heat and a heavy workload. The 54-year-old was found dead on 16 August in a field near the city of Latina in central Italy. Colleagues who spoke to the Guardian said that he had never been sick and was a “kind man who always worked hard”. He sent back regular remittances to his family in Punjab, in the north of India, but friends said Singh had intended to return home within the next few years as he found it increasingly difficult to work in the fields every day as he grew older. His son and son-in-law are now trying to take his body back to India. The results of an autopsy are expected next month with local prosecutors still investigating the circumstances of Singh’s death and whether precautions for workers exposed to heat were taken by his employer. It is unknown how many workers have been injured or died due to extreme heat in Italy this summer. But the country is estimated to have had the highest number of fatalities in Europe as a result of last year’s high temperatures – more than 12,000. The Italian health and safety body has said in the past that accidents at work attributable to the heat are almost never classified as such, rather as fainting, falls or something similar. Most of those working in fields in the summer heat are migrants from countries including India and sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the billions of euros in revenue generated by Italy’s lucrative food industry, harvesting roles come with low wages, long hours and a lack of employment rights. Many workers live in ghettoes and abandoned buildings, with their employment controlled by gangmasters who recruit and keep part of their wages, say unions. Activists in Italy said bosses and gangmasters who exploit workers have no problem forcing them to work in any heat condition, with many doing shifts lasting 10-14 hours a day. In July, Italian police described more than two dozen Indian migrants they rescued from a farm in central Italy as having been “reduced to slavery” through debts, the confiscation of their passports and dilapidated housing. The previous month, a farm worker died when he was allegedly left on a road by his employer after an accident in which his arm was severed. “When extreme heat is correlated with criminal activities in agriculture, it is clear that the tragedies we have been [predicting] for so long are actually occurring,” says Fabio Ciconte, the director of the food and farming NGO Terra. At least 30 people have fainted in Agro Pontino (an area of reclaimed farmland in central Italy about 40 miles from Rome) due to the heat since June, says Marco Omizzolo, a sociologist at La Sapienza University of Rome. Instead of calling ambulances and making medical reports, the employer or gangmaster will place the worker in the shade or give them cold water or coffee before allowing them to continue work. “Employers and gangmasters hide everything in order to avoid legal problems,” says Omizzolo. Another death with parallels to Singh’s was that of Famakan Dembele, 28, a tomato picker in the southern Italian province of Foggia, who died on 7 August last year. The Guardian visited Foggia recently to report on conditions. It had been a scorching hot day, former colleagues of Dembele say. After he had finished his shift, Dembele had gone to wash in one of the shared bathrooms in a ghetto, Torretta Antonacci, not far from Foggia, where he lived along with about 2,000 other farm workers. The mostly African migrants in the ghetto had little in the way of facilities. No running water, no electricity and no sanitation. Just a water tank refilled daily by a lorry. And makeshift housing put together from recycled materials. The Mali-born Dembele had only arrived at the ghetto from Paris a few days earlier. He had been drawn to Foggia, like thousands of other migrants, to work on the region’s tomato harvest, with much of it canned and sent to shops and supermarkets across the UK and Europe. At about 2pm, other workers say they saw Dembele lying in the shade underneath an olive tree. It began to rain and his co-workers approached to see why he was not moving despite the water pouring from the sky. In the Torretta Antonacci ghetto, a woman carries a container of drinking water to her shack. Up to five litres of water is consumed every day by the field workers. Photograph: Stefania Prandi An ambulance was called, but witnesses say he was declared dead and a white sheet was spread over his body. His body remained under the olive tree until the medical examiner arrived and he was taken to the morgue. The cause of death remains unknown, but workers the Guardian spoke to insist he died from extreme heat and exhaustion. Workers are usually paid by the number of boxes or crates of tomatoes they pick, and make about €35 (£29) a day. “After Dembele’s death, we all think twice before proceeding into the hottest hours. We can also drink five two-litre bottles in 24 hours,” says a 32-year-old worker from Guinea-Bissau who wished to remain anonymous. A judicial file on Dembele’s death was opened and closed at a court in Foggia, but requests for information there and with the local health authority by the Guardian were turned down. Hygiene conditions at Torretta Antonacci are terrible. Photograph: Stefania Prandi “In some cases, the fatigue is so severe that people bleed for days when they go to the bathroom,” says Francesco Caruso, a university researcher and union support worker. “Except for those with contracts, of which there are few, it is almost impossible to work every day.” Another former colleague, Daniel, who has spent many years working on farms in France and Italy says working under the summer sun has become a curse. “If they poured money on me and said, ‘Well, now the tomato field is yours, you have to work on it every day,’ I would refuse. Working in such conditions is hell, not life.” Climate scientists have warned that vulnerable migrant workers are among those most at risk from extreme heat in Europe and the rest of the world. “The people who die [from heat stress] are the people we care least about in society,” says Friederike Otto from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial.

chapotraphouse Tychoxii • 3 weeks ago • 100%

https://www.ft.com/content/78a699f2-1f72-4796-9211-6aad2c75e747 Nvidia’s earnings “have become as important for US markets as key economic data,” writes MainFT. For some, they’d become another excuse to get drunk on a Wednesday afternoon.  On a swelteringly hot New York summer’s day, four dozen or so sweaty Nvidia enthusiasts gather at a StoreHouse sports bar on Sixth Avenue. Together, they count down to the chipmaker’s second-quarter results, eyes fixed on the seven large screens blasting CNBC’s Fast Money rather than round two of the US Open. The mastermind behind this gathering is Lauren Balik, an equities analyst who earlier in the day had invited “longs, shorts, and anyone else” to come grab a beer in honour of Wall Street’s hottest stock. So — sandwiched between an off-duty exotic derivatives trader and a young man in tech who swears he’ll sell his Nvidia holdings “in a heartbeat” if it hit $140 — FTAV had happily obliged. Balik tells FTAV she’s “mostly very bearish on things”. The three light-up bubble-blowing pistols she distributed to the predominantly male crowd attested to this playful scepticism. “I love a good bubble more than anything,” she continues. “Figuring out when it’s going to burst is such a fun little game”. “I thought why not, let’s host this event,” she shouts over the hubbub. We’re at a sports bar. All sports lead to gambling, and Wall Street has always been about gambling, too. So I thought, why not combine the two? If you’re watching football or baseball and you’ve got money riding on it, it’s the same thing with stocks. People get attached to these things for better or worse. It’s the way our times work. Balik has “bubbles embedded in me,” she adds. “I remember growing up in Virginia, I had loads of friends whose parents worked at the big internet companies [ahead of the dotcom crash]. Mark Lynch, Microstrategy’s chief financial officer, taught me business studies at high school. I was his star student! It’s very funny.”  The exotic derivatives trader weighs in gloomily: “The fact there’s a dedicated countdown on CNBC to these results, watched at a bar by a bunch of lemmings like me . . . it’s over, man. It’s over.” The countdown itself begins before we find out what, exactly, “it” might be. Juiced up on expensive craft beer, the crowd booms FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO, ONE and lets out a collective “HELL YEAH” as the share price initially ticks higher. A man in a baseball cap thrusts his arms into the air in delight. Another promptly downs a pint of Bud Light. A disgruntled sports fan at the far end of the bar looks on, confused.  But the good times don’t last. Though no one in the room seems to care much by now, revenue in the three months through July comes in at $30bn, — up 122 per cent from a year ago but barely ahead of the $28.7bn analysts had expected. Plus, Nvidia is expecting $32.5bn in revenue for the current quarter, plus or minus 2 per cent, which is only narrowly ahead of expectations. In Nvidia earnings world, this qualifies as a blip, and the share price swings lower to a chorus of boos.  Still smiling from ear to ear, Balik tells us the owner of the bar had a baby earlier in the day. “Maybe Nvidia would make for quite a nice middle name. . . See you here next quarter?”

videos Tychoxii • 3 months ago • 100%

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--we have a bunch of leftover, low quality, ultraprocessed "food" --i know! let's feed it to kids! --turns the leftover, low quality, ultraprocessed "food" is also full of lead and phthalates --i know! lets feed it to even more kids!

Comics Tychoxii • 5 months ago • 100%

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Hector Oesterheld was an innovative comic book writer who achieved mainstream success in Argentina writing stories full of humanism. He radicalised more and more in his later years. His life and that of his family ended in tragedy at the hands of the fascist dictatorship in 1977.

videos Tychoxii • 5 months ago • 100%

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getting good vibes from an ancient rome channel??

music Tychoxii • 6 months ago • 100%

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mother earth will win

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games Tychoxii • 6 months ago • 100%

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well renegade cut has it down to a science, if it's a chill game with no real plot i have winamp running in the background with any kind of music and mute the game completely

music Tychoxii • 6 months ago • 100%

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videos Tychoxii • 7 months ago • 100%

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Remember AltShiftX? He's back. In feature length form.

videos Tychoxii • 7 months ago • 100%

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- Ernst Lubitsch - Trouble in Paradise - Peter Weir - Picnic at Hanging Rock - Louis Malle - Murmur of the Heart - Jaromil Jireš - The Joke - Ang Lee - The Ice Storm - David Lean - Great Expectations - Roberto Rossellini - The Age of the Medici - Roberto Rossellini - Cartesius - Roberto Rossellini - Blaise Pascal - Charles Chaplin - City Lights - Lars Von Trier - Box - Alfonso Cuáron - Y tu mama Tambien - Lars Von Trier - Antichrist as commentd by "fernandoguimaraes2" 9 years ago-

music Tychoxii • 7 months ago • 100%

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I can't relax 'cause I haven't done a thing and I can't do a thing 'cause I can't relax 

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 or 

music Tychoxii • 8 months ago • 100%

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news Tychoxii • 8 months ago • 97%

>For years, investors and financial planners have advised purchasing land as one of the best and safest strategies for growing wealth, due to the old adage that “god’s not making any more of it.” That may prove to be untrue, however, as the United States recently announced plans to expand its territory by over a million square kilometers. **The expansion comes in the form of ocean-floor territory which the US has claimed as a means to mine resources and grow its global presence.** >This newfound ownership of land is not unprecedented, though it serves as new territory for the United States, as the nation hasn’t formally expanded its land since the ratification of Hawaii as a state in 1959. Dozens of other countries across the world have begun extending their ownership of seabed space, mostly dividing the regions along continental fault lines hundreds of miles away from their landmass coasts. The US State Department agreed to finally throw its own hat in the ring as of December of 2023, when the country began dividing up seabeds in the Arctic, Atlantic, Pacific, Bering Sea, and many other underwater fields. >The land accumulates to more than 386,000 square miles of undeveloped ocean floor, accounting for more than double the landmass of California. The land serves as part of the United States’ Extended Continental Shelf, which resides over 230 miles from the nearest coast of the massive nation. The move comes as part of a collaboration between the State Department and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which seeks to gather geological data and resources from the newly acquired regions. >Though the United States has laid claim to the land, experts are unsure of how the legality of the move will be examined on the international stage. As part of their ownership, the US will be made to submit data defining the newly acquired region to the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea, though the US has not technically ratified the organization’s existence. The UNCLOS is currently recognized by the European Union and a litany of other sovereign nations, despite the fact that the United States refuses to sign on due to a complex series of legal and political issues at the core of the group’s foundation. >The United States has previously condemned nations such as China and the Philippines for attempting the same kind of border expansion, though this has largely been due to the aforementioned countries trying to construct man-made islands to extend their maritime borders. Without the US formally ratifying UNCLOS, it stands to reason that the international community may hold a few objections to the expansion, though experts seem to agree that the United States is well within its rights to engage in this acquisition of continental shelf land. >For the United States, the most significant new region is the continental shelf land acquired in the Arctic Ocean, which allows the country newfound access to fishing, shipping, and mining opportunities. Of course, numerous studies will have to be done regarding the existing ecosystems in the region before any of these changes can take effect, as manmade interference could be devastating to local wildlife if it is not handled carefully. https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/cltr/united-states-grows.html

videos Tychoxii • 8 months ago • 100%

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music Tychoxii • 8 months ago • 100%

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thats right you have to remember the 90s now

music Tychoxii • 9 months ago • 100%

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videos Tychoxii • 9 months ago • 100%

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music Tychoxii • 9 months ago • 100%

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feliz 2024!

videos Tychoxii • 9 months ago • 100%

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