Earth Tones

Sleep Deprived: Part I

March 23, 2012
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Sleep Deprived: Part I

As a child, I never appreciated sleep. I remember actually thinking it was a waste of time because apparently my childhood was so great that I couldn’t wait to wake up and experience the day (which in this case refers to the time I was awake not daylight). Now, I love to sleep, but I occasionally have those nights where I just can’t shut my brain off. I wouldn’t call myself an insomniac, but during a recent bout of sleeplessness, I was inspired to investigate why my brain was being so uncooperative. Scientists believe that sleep has three main systems of regulation in the brain – homeostatic, circadian, and allostatic, and when we keep ourselves awake to work, party, or (unintentionally) worry, we are utilizing the allostatic pathway to counter the other two regulatory pathways. Thus, even though most...

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How bad is it?: Things to consider before you purchase your next bottled water

March 10, 2012
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We’ve all heard how ‘bad’ bottled water is for the environment and our budgets at one point or another, but how negative could purchasing this convenient solution to our thirst be? Well, you’d be surprised. Buying and drinking bottled water actually hits you in several places, the most apparent of them being our environment, your body, and your wallet.

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Environmentally Speaking … Explaining the Exceptionally Warm Winter

February 23, 2012
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Environmentally Speaking … Explaining the Exceptionally Warm Winter

Has anyone else noticed the utter lack of cold and snow? Yes, I’m aware I’m in the tropics, but I’m talking about Ohio. Every time I get a phone call from Ohio there’s a comment about how warm it is. Of course, if you’re reading this post, you’ve probably already attributed the anomalous warmth to climate change, and you’d be correct – partially and indirectly, at least. So what’s going on? First, there’s La Niña. La Niña occurs when trade winds push warm Pacific waters westward toward Australia and Asia, exposing cooler waters (by about 5°C) in the East. When waters are cooler, the vapor pressure above the waters decreases, leading to low moisture levels in the American West. The less moisture in the West, the less moisture the jet stream, which travels eastward, pushes east toward Ohio and...

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India Unsanitized: Water’s Dead End

February 15, 2012
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India Unsanitized: Water’s Dead End

After Indians withdraw water from wells, rivers, or lakes for daily use, there are almost no sanitation facilities to clean it. The untreated water first stagnates in open drains, eventually traveling back into surface and ground waters where it can no longer be safely utilized. Water has reached a dead end in India, just as it has in hundreds of other countries around the world. If sanitation facilities are not built to recycle water in these countries, over 5 billion people will suffer from water shortages by 2025 (Blue Planet Network).

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It’s Not Just Moun Fou: Our Global Clean Water Crisis

January 25, 2012
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It’s Not Just Moun Fou: Our Global Clean Water Crisis

After just a few hours in small town India, I ran out of the filtered water I brought with me from the neighboring megalopolis of Bangalore. I wanted a refill, so that I could avoid buying bottled water, which would create waste and utilize two extra liters of water (the amount it takes to actually produce the bottle). Unfortunately, finding clean water in Tiptur is quite the undertaking. There is no visible sewage treatment plant, open drains are ubiquitous, and the local river could be easily confused with a landfill (without all of the regulations we Americans normally associate with dumping grounds of that magnitude). Most people here avoid drinking surface water by tapping borewells tens of meters below the ground, but even that water could harm my highly vulnerable immune system. While the borewell solution has been a...

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Recap of Fracking Mic Check: Ohio Students vs. Natural Gas Industry

January 5, 2012
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Students from all over Ohio joined forces on Ohio State University’s campus to speak out against fracking on 11-18-11.

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Promising Technologies Profile: Virus-based Low Carbon Engineering

January 3, 2012
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Promising Technologies Profile: Virus-based Low Carbon Engineering

A research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been able to biologically produce highly efficient solar cells, hydrogen fuel, and carbon storage units. The team, led by Dr. Angela Belcher, has trained viruses by manipulating their DNA to create 40 semi-conductor and electronic materials. The viruses, mixed with some safe, non-toxic chemicals, build metal sheets molecule by molecule with very limited environmental impacts. Viruses Aid in Energy Production Dr. Belcher’s lab has utilized these viruses to make multiple components for renewable energy production, including carbon nanotubes that improve the efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cells. These cells are relatively inexpensive and are named for the dye molecules attached to the semi-conductor surface that harvest the majority of the light. Carbon nanotubes have been tested previously to enhance electric flow in the cells, but the tubes’ construction and arrangement...

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Fracking Suspected in Youngstown Earthquake

January 3, 2012
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At 3:05 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, I felt my house shake. My first thought was that something heavy must have fallen over and, god forbid, broken. It wasn’t until I logged on to Facebook and saw the multitude of “Did we just have an earthquake?” statuses that I even realized I had just experienced a 4.0 magnitude earthquake. I know earthquakes happen, and that they occur often in some parts of the U.S. So why was everyone making such a big deal over a non-lethal quake? Because earthquakes don’t happen in Boardman, Ohio. In fact, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, there was not a single earthquake recorded with an epicenter in Youngstown (or in the encompassing Mahoning County) until 2011. Just to make sure, I checked out the U.S. Geographical Survey’s map of all recorded...

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Real Talk: A Chat with Bill McKibben

December 20, 2011
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The Real Talk section of The Pulse will be a space where we post interviews, discussions and conversations with a variety of folks.  In Real Talk, we’ll hear from activists, thinkers, and leaders of our time.

For our first interview, we spoke with Bill McKibben, one of our nation’s most captivating  thinkers and a renowned journalist and writer.

Help us continue the conversation, and COMMENT BELOW on the relationship between climate change and the capitalist mode of production, the viability/possibility of a no-growth economy, and small-scale vs. large-scale organization of society.  The purpose of Real Talk is to brush aside pleasantries and get to the core of the issues of our time.  We want to facilitate discussion, and that requires your participation.

Thoughts?

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Video from Keystone XL Pipeline Protest Outside John Boehner’s Office

December 15, 2011
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