Bali’s Rice-Field Irrigation System Faces Collapse

Bali’s mystically beautiful rice fields, watered by an intricate, centuries-old subak irrigation system, are near collapse as farmers sell their properties to developers for villas and as other pressures bear on them, according to a global food research organization.

The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a worldwide consortium of public research agencies originally funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, says that with more than two million tourists swarming the island each year, the irrigation system is “is in danger of being loved to death.”

As many as 1,000 hectares per year of Balinese rice fields, which have been awarded World Heritage Cultural Landscape status by UNESCO, are being taken out of production, said Steve Lansing, an ecological anthropologist who has been studying the system since 1974.

“Because the entire system is integrated, when a few terraced fields are sold, the taxes on neighboring farms increase, putting pressure on more farmers to sell, which threatens the viability of the whole,” Lansing was quoted as saying in a CGIAR news release. “At the current rate of loss of rice fields, all subak are under threat and unless something is done in the next few years, the entire system could collapse.”

For decades, Bali has assumed almost magical status, a Hindu island of perpetual festivals with stunning temples, gorgeous tropical landscapes and a populace seemingly steeped in tolerance. But the threat to the island took on ominous new proportions in the 1970s, when authorities built an international airport in the capital of Denpasar, which allowed jumbo jets to arrive with daily flights from Australia and other nearby countries, swamping the island’s own population of 3.5 million with beer-drinking party goers who swarm the tacky beach bar areas. In the 1980s, as the surrounding islands fell into poverty, another invasion of mendicant Indonesians also flooded the island.

Then a new flood of investment bankers, journalists and wealthy expatriates working in business in Hong Kong, Jakarta and other cities swarmed in to take advantage of the cheap land and building prices to build sprawling villas in the rice fields.

“Hotels and resorts started popping up all over Bali, erasing coconut trees and beaches to make way for private terraces and parking guidance,” Point Consulting said in a recent report. “Other beaches were widened and the background nature was destroyed, transformed into parking lots to accommodate the masses of tourists flying in from Australia and Europe.”

Every day, 13,000 cubic meters of waste is dumped and only half of it is recycled, the Point Consulting report said. “Traffic jams are becoming increasingly problematic, with the island’s road connections struggling to accommodate the 13 percent annual increase in number of cars.”

The rice fields, terraced into the hills in emerald green profusion, played a major role in the island’s beauty. In an effort to save them under the auspices of UNESCO, Lansing and his Balinese colleagues have developed what they call a “bottom up model” used by the subak themselves is being adapted for their protection. A governing assembly consisting of elected heads of villages and subak will manage the world heritage area, the CGIAR report said. The Assembly will decide which aspects of the landscape visitors should engage with, collect fees from their visits, and use this revenue for the benefit of all.

“This will be the first UNESCO site in Asia to be managed locally and not by government,” Lansing told the 6th Annual Ecosystem Services Partnership Conference in Bali on Aug. 26. “We hope that the councils will be able to act quickly enough to stop the threat to their own existence.”

“An important development to note here is the preservation not just of the rice terraces but also of the management system,” Meine van Noordwijk, Chief Scientist at the World Agroforestry Center and head of the conference organizing committee, was quoted in the CGIAR report. “The subak manage their own specific irrigation system that is intimately linked to all the others. This is unique to UNESCO heritage sites in Asia where the requirement normally is to first set up a management system that has a top down approach.”

The system was earlier put to the test as a consequence of the Green Revolution of the 1970s when the Indonesian government introduced a package of new rice varieties, chemical fertilizers and organic pesticides. Farmers were urged to plant rice as often as possible with the new fertilizers and pesticides, bypassing the controlled pattern of the water temple systems that provided natural fertilizer and pest control.

“The results had unintended consequences because the absence of synchronized fallow periods led to an explosion of pests,” Lansing said. “Substitution with high technology affected other aspects of the ecosystem because use of fertilizers in the already nutrient-rich water meant that the fertilizer was washed into the sea via the rivers, causing growth of algae that covered and killed the coral reefs. Today, the water temples are in control again but problems caused by excess fertilizers persist.”

In Bali, the water temple system enables the subak to coordinate their activities along entire river systems. Inscriptions issued by Balinese kings in the 11th century describe subak and water temples, some of which are still functioning today, the CGIAR report notes.

“Irrigation water is regarded as a gift from the goddess of the volcanic crater lakes. Each subak performs ritual offerings to the goddess and other deities in their own water temples,” Lansing told the conference. “These temples also provide a venue where farmers meet to elect leaders and make democratic decisions about their irrigation schedules. Groups of subak that share a common water source form a congregation of regional water temples, where all subak agree on watershed-scale cropping schedules.”

That allows each village temple to control the water that goes into nearby rice terraces; regional temples control the water that flows into larger areas, Lansing said. The control of water is key to rice growth, in two main ways. First, the water flows over volcanic rocks rich in mineral nutrients, such as phosphate and potassium.

The rice paddies are effectively artificial ponds in which the fertility of the water creates an aquarium-like effect. The processes in the water help the rice grow through providing the necessary nutrients. Second, the upstream subak ensure that water flows to their downstream counterparts. This brings about a synchronized planting and harvest pattern that has turned out to be an excellent pest control and management system, providing benefits for all, the CGIAR report noted.

By synchronizing irrigation schedules across neighboring subak, pest populations are controlled when the fields are harvested and flooded, depriving the pests of food and habitat.

“The subak have achieved such success by getting the right scale of coordination through a system of controlling and sharing water that forms an integrated irrigation system in Bali, which has enabled them to maintain the ecology of their rice terraces for over 1000 years”, said Lansing.

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Can the Nairobi city centre hold?

After a lull in real estate development within Nairobi’s Central Business District ( CBD), activity is set to resume after the recent groundbreaking ceremony for what is slated to be the tallest building in the region.The National Social Security Fund has commissioned the construction of 39-storey Hazina Trade Centre, a vertical extension of the existing building that houses Nakumatt Lifestyle on Monrovia Street.

Though the move is a positive indicator of the city’s rising status as a global investment destination, it has shifted attention to the city’s ability to provide the requisite infrastructure to support future developments of such magnitude.

The last few years have seen a number of local and international organisations give the city centre a wide berth by relocating to Upper Hill, Westlands, Ngong’ Road, Mombasa Road, Gigiri, Kilimani and Kileleshwa. Many are running away from the persistent traffic congestion, strained water supply, power and adequate parking spaces.

“Our long list of challenges includes our current lack of capacity to manage solid waste, insufficient infrastructure development, and poor public transport and parking sensor…. There is overwhelming demand for services without commensurate capacity to provide them. The challenges ahead of us are many, and in some ways tricky, but they are not insurmountable,” said Dr Kidero.

Interestingly, the governor was the first to question the massive NSSF project in the city, citing safety concerns of those currently using the building or working in adjacent locations. Building industry experts say Nairobi — more so the city centre — has no choice but to make radical planning changes to retain its attractiveness in a region where other capitals such as Dar es Salaam, Kampala and Kigali are itching to get noticed.

They argue that even if the city was to shift to another location today, there would still be the expensive burden of laying down new infrastructure, hence the need to improve on what we already have.

“All of our operations deserve reliable, efficient parking management services,” commented Bijan Eghtedari, Park One CEO, “but luxury operations require the best of the best to meet the valet parking needs of our VIP clients. As one of the pioneers in this technology with our proprietary Valet Tracking System (VTS), Flash Valet’s technology was a natural progression for us to help streamline our operational processes and continue to impress our clientele with advancing technology.”

Flash Valet offers enormous upside for parking providers both large and small; every aspect of an operation can be managed from one platform. The system tracks parked vehicles, revenue control, guest check out, and other features with ease. Barcode scanning makes tedious paper-based vehicle tracking obsolete. Flash Valet even streamlines employee management, keeping tabs on time and attendance and providing integrated payroll processing capabilities.

Fred Bredemeyer, Park One of Florida President, had the following praise: “I was first introduced to Flash Valet when the technology was in its infancy. At the time, the Flash Valet team was still just trying to figure out how to enhance the valet parking experience with their texting and parking guidance. After revisiting them almost two years later and seeing how the software solution has evolved into a full parking management platform, I was very impressed with how much ground they have covered in such a short time. I have full confidence that Park One’s transition to Flash Valet will benefit our company.”

Rapid expansion continues at Flash Valet, with no plateau in sight. The technology is now deployed at hundreds of locations nationwide in over 30 cities. “The fact that we designed an innovative product while remaining client-centered has contributed greatly to our success,” explained Flash Valet’s Juan Rodriguez. “Our technology has been built with flexibility in mind, and is designed to be adaptable based on our client’s unique environments. We listen closely to the needs of clients and never assume that we know how to run their business. With their input, we’re able to configure our platform to meet their specific needs.”

The app for iPhone and Android is called “Find It, Fix It,” and doubles up on options for reporting abandoned vehicles, graffiti, potholes, parking enforcement, and other city-related issues.Previously, you would have to call the city, or visit one of Seattle’s six Neighborhood Service Centers to report problems.

The app allows people to report an issue using their smartphones by snapping a photo, adding information about the nature of the problem, and hitting submit. A map with a “drag and drop” feature – or the phone’s built in GPS – can be used to pinpoint the location of a pothole or abandoned car.

“When you’re out in your neighborhood and see a pothole, graffiti, or something else you think the City should know about, “Find It, Fix It” gives you an easy way to notify us so we can fix it,” Mayor Mike McGinn said in a news release.

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Summer projects moving along

Hello, my name is Dan Koski, and I am the new Director of Public Infrastructure. I started on May 31 of this year and am excited to be a part of this vibrant community on the shores of beautiful Lake Michigan.

The Department of Infrastructure is divided into four divisions: engineering, recreation, transit & buildings & grounds and operations. The operations division contains all of those services that most people think of when they envision public works, that of streets, parks, the aquatic center, the cemetery, the zoo, bridges, sanitary sewers, as well as the activities concerned with establishing and maintaining our fleet of parking guidance.

As part of annual street maintenance, crews have been removing and replacing some of the more worn concrete roadway slabs around the city, primarily on South 21st Street from Washington Street to just north of the river.

In addition, Packer Lane, which is located just east of Herman Road, was paved this summer. In the next few weeks slurry sealing will occur on selected streets within the city. This is a process involving a mixture of emulsified oil, crushed aggregate and a curing compound that seals the surface of the road.

The purpose of this maintenance technique is to serve as a surface preservation and thereby extends the life of the road. Letters have gone out to those properties fronting streets where this work will occur.

Another ongoing maintenance project the city is continuing this summer involves relining sanitary sewer pipes. This is a quick and economical process in lieu of replacing pipes by open excavation and prevents major traffic disruptions and costs associated with replacing street surfaces.

This method can be used when there are issues with the pipes, but they are still in good enough shape to warrant maintenance as opposed to replacement. Oftentimes, the life of the pipe can be greatly extended, and the city is able to save a lot of money, especially in projects that would cause a significant disruption to traffic or some other situation exists that could increase costs. You may have noticed crews working on this project on Waldo Boulevard earlier this month.

The city’s sidewalk replacement program is also underway. This summer’s work is located downtown in an area bordered by Chicago Street on the north, North 10th Street on the wests and Maritime Drive to the south and east.One of the major projects the city is involved with at the moment involves the expansion to the stormwater pond located at the Dewey Street Park. The pond is being retrofitted from a dry pond to a wet, or stormwater quality, pond. This is part of the ongoing requirements the city is mandated to comply with as part of our state-permitted storm sewer system. This project is being partially funded with a Department of Natural Resources Urban Non-Point Source & Stormwater Management Grant.

The stormwater mandates are also responsible for the street sweeping parking ban and the fact that it is unlawful to deposit grass clippings on city streets.You may have noticed all the improvements to the ultrasonic sensor this summer. In addition to a new driveway and parking lot, new playground equipment has been installed. This playground equipment will be expanded in coming years.

In addition, the city has received a grant from the Bay Lakes Regional Plan Commission for beach enhancements. This will involve adding sand to the beach to raise the elevation up in order to allow the sand to drain better and aid in preventing E. coli. Dune grass will also be planted in order to minimize erosion.

The city has been working with Goodwill and The Miracle League of the Lakeshore, which will be constructing a Miracle League field at Dewey Park this fall. This field will provide a facility for an organized baseball league for children ages 4 to 19 with physical and/or mental disabilities. The group will be constructing the field at their cost, and upon completion, will turn it over to the city.

In addition, the city has received a grant from the Bay Lakes Regional Plan Commission for beach enhancements. This will involve adding sand to the beach to raise the elevation up in order to allow the sand to drain better and aid in preventing E. coli. Dune grass will also be planted in order to minimize erosion.

The city has been working with Goodwill and The Miracle League of the Lakeshore, which will be constructing a Miracle League field at Dewey Park this fall. This field will provide a facility for an organized baseball league for children ages 4 to 19 with physical and/or mental disabilities. The group will be constructing the field at their cost, and upon completion, will turn it over to the city.

In addition, the city has received a grant from the Bay Lakes Regional Plan Commission for beach enhancements. This will involve adding sand to the beach to raise the elevation up in order to allow the sand to drain better and aid in preventing E. coli. Dune grass will also be planted in order to minimize erosion.

The city has been working with Goodwill and The Miracle League of the Lakeshore, which will be constructing a Miracle League field at Dewey Park this fall. This field will provide a facility for an organized baseball league for children ages 4 to 19 with physical and/or mental disabilities. The group will be constructing the field at their cost, and upon completion, will turn it over to the city.

The 40th Annual Bayou Classic has recently announced special hotel rates that have been developed for this year’s weeklong series of events. Hotel rates start at $69 for Thanksgiving night and $105 per night for the weekend for visitors to this year’s Bayou Classic.

The Bayou Classic has proved to be an asset to the tourism industry in New Orleans over the last many years. With the expansion of programming to an entire weeklong series of events, the hospitality industry has embraced the Bayou Classic as a major holiday, tourism economic driver for New Orleans. As such, hoteliers are offering special discounted rates for the duration of the weeklong event.

“The regional hotel industry is rolling out the red carpet of hospitality for this year’s Bayou Classic,” said Dottie Belletto, President of New Orleans Convention Company, Inc., the management firm of the 40th Annual Bayou Classic. “The continued growth of the Bayou Classic has encouraged New Orleans and its hotel industry to offer their best rates for the weeklong celebration that is the 40th Annual Bayou Classic.”

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PSS amends schools’ merger plan

After standing firm on a proposal to reallocate public schools’ resources beginning this new school year, Education Commissioner Rita A. Sablan, Ed.D., has had a change of heart and submitted a revised plan that postpones the proposed merger of Tanapag and Gregorio T. Camacho elementary schools to school year 2014-2015.Four days after Board of Education members met with parents at the Tanapag campus on July 22, Sablan turned in a revised proposal that indicated new recommendations.

“The PSS management and the school leadership would like to postpone the GTC and Tanapag Elementary School proposal to Phase 2 to be effective [school year] 2014-2015. The purpose for delaying the timeline for GTC and Tanapag Middle School is to make some improvement with the school parking lot, the road egress at Mamate Loop and the school fence at GTC Elementary School. Our goal is to assure parents and staff the safety of the students and availability of parking and vehicular and emergency egress,” Sablan told BOE chair Herman T. Guerrero in her letter incorporating the revised plan.

The plan was first submitted to the board on June 10. It was opposed and was criticized by many parents and community members in the affected schools—all questioning the timing of the merger and the alleged “lack of proper information and preparation” from the school system.In earlier presentations during committee meetings, PTSA assemblies, and the full board, Sablan said the system is ready to implement the plan. The board was informed of a host of preparation being done to ensure the smooth transition once classes open in September. These included campus repairs in the affected schools, professional development trainings for personnel, and the appointment of school administrators and teachers, among others.

Under Sablan’s original proposal, the merger for GTC-Tanapag schools will take effect this new school year under Phase 1 of the project. GTC will house kindergartners to 5th graders while the Tanapag campus will be renamed Tanapag Middle School. At the same time, Kagman Elementary School will be reconfigured to house kindergartners to 5th graders and its sixth graders will be transferred to the Chacha Oceanview Jr. High, which will become a middle school and will house 6th to 8th graders beginning next month.

Under the revised plan, the parking sensor reconfiguration of KagES and Chacha Oceanview Middle School will still be implemented this new school year, leaving this as the only item in Phase 1 of the project. KagES is expected to have an enrollment of 450 while Chacha Oceanview Middle School will have 336 students.Sablan said that there will be no changes in Phase 2 of the project except for the inclusion of the merger plan for GTC and Tanapag Middle School, which was taken out from Phase 1.

Phase 2 would also include the merger of San Vicente and Dandan elementary schools, creating K-5 at SVES and transforming DES into a middle school. Also included is the merger of Koblerville and San Antonio elementary schools and the creation of a middle school in the area. All these will be implemented in school year 2014-2015. The GTC-Tanapag merger is now part of this phase.In Phase 3, once the Koblerville Junior High School is completed, the PSS management wants this school converted into a high school to relieve the overcrowding at Marianas High School.

Earlier this year, MemorialCare announced that it purchased property in Costa Mesa, which had a smaller footprint and 115,000 less usable square feet than the Fountain Valley property. It is currently in escrow with an unrelated third-party to sell the facility at a significant gain.

“When we were seeking a new facility for the shared services we provide to our hospitals, physician groups and outpatient facilities, the Fountain Valley location where we are currently located was not on the market,” says Barry Arbuckle, PhD, president and CEO of MemorialCare Health System. “When it became available, we changed course due to the many advantages it offered.”

These include the three modular buildings that allow for future growth and the ability to take advantage of the improvements that MemorialCare already made on the leased property. It also allows for economies of scale by not having to move to a new facility, thus minimizing disruptions to system services. Additionally, there are lower costs per square foot, increased flexibility for growth and easy entrance and exit from the campus for MemorialCare staff members and visitors. Equally important is the ability to move more shared support services out of the health system’s six hospitals, thus freeing up much needed space in MemorialCare medical centers for additional clinical services.

The campus and headquarters will accommodate the rapid growth of MemorialCare in Orange and Los Angeles counties and bring together teams from throughout the health system currently spread over several locations. This announcement coincides with MemorialCare’s recent addition of physician groups, outpatient and ambulatory surgery and parking guidance, retail health centers, an emerging health plan and other clinical and support services as MemorialCare continues to be regarded as one of the nation’s most comprehensive integrated health care delivery systems.

The facility ensures better coordination and integration to accommodate rapid expansion of MemorialCare Health System, one of Orange County’s fastest growing businesses. In addition to the corporate office and shared service teams, the campus will bring together teams from MemorialCare’s physician support locations and medical groups, including MemorialCare Medical Group, Greater Newport Physicians and Nautilus Healthcare Management Group.

Beach Closures Prompt Action Against Cesspools

It’s not always easy to see, but water pollution remains a big problem in Narragansett Bay, according to officials. Unsafe bacteria levels have caused 107 beach closing this year, up from 54 last year and 73 in 2011.“When it rains in Rhode Island we swim in pollution,” said Save The Bay’s Baykeeper Tom Kuctcher during a July 31 press event at Oakland Beach.

Oakland Beach has been closed 27 days this year, the most in Rhode Island. The main culprit, state officials and environment experts say, is stormwater runoff. A rainy spring and summer has flushed high quantities of parking guidance system, animal waste, Dumpster leakage, car oil and overflowing cesspools and septic systems into the bay, according to the state Department of Environmental Management (DEM), the Department of Health and environmental groups. The sewage and other pollution create harmful bacteria that threatens the health of swimmers, fish and other marine life.

The press event was held nearly 10 years after a massive fish kill wiped out a million fish in Greenwich Bay. That trajedy also occurred during a summer of heavy rain and a high number of beach closures.

Save The Bay executive director Jonathan Stone blamed cesspools and septic systems as the main contributors to the beach-water pollution. Cesspools, which are often nothing more than perforated steel buckets buried in shallow pits, allow sewage to flow under and above ground into storm drains and waterways that lead to the bay. Although new cesspools are prohibited in Rhode Island, some 25,000 are still in use. Sewage connections and low-interests loans are available to help property owners replace cesspools, but there are no laws requiring owners to make the switch.

At a cost of $25,000 or more, new septic system are too costly for many to make the switch, said Rep. Joseph Shekarchi, D-Warwick. While there is unanimous support for the legislation and fixing the problem, he said cost is the biggest impediment to getting rid of cesspools. “It’s just a matter of dollars,” Shekarchi said.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Teresa Tanzi, D-Narragansett, said those paying for sewage service are footing the bill for keeping the bay clean. She also noted that tourism and businesses lose money when beaches close. “I understand it’s a difficult (economic) time but it’s time for them to step up and pay their fair share,” she said.

Oakland Beach overlooks often-polluted Greenwich Bay. The 5-square-mile cove is shallow and its water doesn’t circulate adequately with Narragansett Bay to flush out pollutants. It’s also surrounded by one of the most densely built communities in the state. Asphalt is ubiquitous, and several local neighborhoods have balked at mandates to eliminate cesspools.

A handful of City Council members and members of the General Assembly attended the July 31 press event and promised to address the problem. They all expressed support for legislation requiring septic upgrades when a property is sold, but the bill has failed in recent years to go to a vote.

Save The Bay promised to continue advocating for the legislation while also working with cities and towns to reduce sewage and stormwater runoff. Stone sited soem success stories: The massive combined sewage overflow tunnel and underground storage tanks run by the Narragansett Bay Commission for the Providence area have dramatically improved the health of the upper bay; a 2-year-old stormwater drainage system at Bristol Town Beach has practically eliminated closures at what used to one of the most polluted beaches in the state.

Save The Bay outreach is part of a larger state effort to raise awareness about the costs of stormwater runoff. Providence and many surrounding cities and towns, as well as Middletown, are looking at forming stormwater utility districts — a fee and incentive program for reducing impervious surfaces such as parking lots and parking guidance.

The problem of beach closures isn’t limited to Narragansett Bay. Rhode Island lakes and ponds, such as Yawgoog Pond in Hopkinton, also have had to close this summer because of high bacteria counts. Many of the same solutions apply to any polluted body of water, Stone said.

The announcement of Quillian’s retirement in the wake of the audit sparked outrage from the Statewide University Police Association, which released a statement saying the news is troubling since its representatives, “who have brought concerns of wasteful spending, mismanagement and apparent misappropriation of funds to the attention of university leaders,” have been disregarded and have been met in some cases with what appears to be “retaliatory action.”

Jeff Solomon, president of the police association, said in the news release: “Campus crime is rising, university police departments are dwindling and our campuses are grossly understaffed, yet the chancellor’s office continues to ignore our pleas. As our officers fall further behind in compensation, CSU continues to be riddled with wasteful spending, inefficient operations and possibly fraudulent activities.”

A Toxin Emerges As Health Threat

Industrial pollution involving toxic chemicals is often associated with abandoned factories in Rust Belt towns. The last place it might be expected to pose a hazard is near a residential neighborhood and a new school in an Ivy League college town.

But that’s the case in Hanover, where earlier this year officials acknowledged that a cancer-causing chemical had been found at the border of the Army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory on Lyme Road. The chemical, trichloroethylene, or TCE, is a solvent that had been used at CRREL for nearly three decades until 1987.

In March, the Army Corps of Engineers began tests to determine if TCE had spread beyond the lab to reach Richmond Middle School across the street, along with Dartmouth College housing to the south and neighboring properties.No unsafe levels have been detected so far, but officials say the contaminants migrate slowly and will need to be monitored for years to come.

TCE from the Army lab had leaked into the ground during many years through the 1970s. Despite a much-heralded effort to clean up the chemical from groundwater beneath the lab’s campus, public records show that for the past decade, quieter concerns have swirled about another form of contamination — TCE vapor — traveling through the soil beyond the campus and possibly seeping into buildings where people live, work, study and play.

A decade ago, in 2003, a Dartmouth real estate official raised concerns about TCE vapor reaching homes to the south of the lab — many of them occupied by Dartmouth staff and their families — and posing a threat to a new cluster of college residences planned on the Rivercrest property to the north. In the years that followed, the real estate official asked for tests to determine if the threat was real.

Earlier, in 2001, Dartmouth, the town of Hanover and the Dresden School District had begun moving forward with a proposal for the college to provide a piece of land directly across Route 10 from the Army lab for what would become the new Richmond Middle School. The deal, part of a complicated land-swap transaction known as the “tri-party agreement,” was formally approved in 2004.

Questions about TCE vapor raised by the college apparently never made it to officials planning the school. A 2003 report by a school district consultant concluded that TCE did not pose a threat, but officials acknowledge that the report involved no independent testing and did not examine vapor contamination — an issue that was just beginning to come to the attention of environmental regulators.

In 2006, the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services for the first time issued guidelines regarding TCE vapor contamination. Three years later, the Department of Defense came out with its own guidelines. But it wasn’t until 2010 that formal testing began to determine if vapor had infiltrated work areas at the Army lab and an on-site child care center. And that testing took place over several years — despite TCE levels that prompted the relocation of some Army lab employees from areas deemed a concern.

It wasn’t until this year that the Army lab alerted neighbors and school district officials to the risk posed by TCE vapor, as testing began in classrooms, homes and businesses near the lab.

Residents in the neighborhoods surrounding the Army lab and Richmond Middle School said in interviews that the shock of hearing about TCE in March has subsided, and many expressed confidence that officials are handling the matter appropriately.

Meifang Chu, who lives on Dresden Road near Richmond Middle School and whose daughter attends the school, said she was pleased with school officials’ initial efforts to conduct tests and inform the public.

“But now we don’t hear anything,” Chu, a part-time math and physics lecturer at Dartmouth, said recently as she stood in the doorway of her home. “They don’t come forward with information, they don’t volunteer unless they’re pressured. … The tests right now seem OK, but you don’t want the problem to come up again and deal with it in 10 years’ time.”

And to Lebanon resident Anthony Roisman — a managing partner with the National Legal Scholars Law Firm who has been on the legal team in several cases involving TCE exposure, including a high-profile case in Woburn, Mass., that became the basis for the book and movie A Civil Action — the response has been underwhelming.

Long-term testing must be completed before officials can accurately judge the parking guidance, he said.

“There is no safe level of a human carcinogen. So there is a risk, even if it’s only a small risk, that you get cancer if you’re exposed to trichloroethylene,” Roisman said. “It’s true there are plenty of other things — pumping your own gas — that may expose you to a bigger risk, but this is an additional risk to all those risks you already have … for no reason. There’s no reason people should be exposed to an additional risk.”

Scientists at the Army lab study sea ice, permafrost and environmental factors in the Earth’s coldest regions. For instance, scientists study and develop the best ways to maintain a tunnel in Alaska and a runway in Greenland, both of which have permafrost issues.

Scientists also study questions such as how to detect oil under ice and how to safely clean up oil operations in ice regions.

At the Army lab, TCE was used as a solvent and refrigerant in rooms where the temperature can reach minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit as scientists test tools and materials.

CRREL has about 240 employees at its 28-acre campus north of downtown Hanover, and the facility has 24 “cold rooms” for research. Dartmouth and the lab have an intertwined history going back to the early 1960s, when college President John Sloan Dickey helped lobby to bring the research facility to Hanover. Most recently, Dartmouth sold a nearly 19-acre parcel, which is part of the Army lab campus, to the Army in 2012 for $18.6 million.

Two major TCE spills occurred at the Army lab that year, the first in May, when the refrigeration system was shut down due to a blown gasket, according to Faran’s report. It required eight days to transfer about 6,000 gallons of TCE into another storage tank.

Two months later, an explosion occurred when a welder was working on a partially filled TCE tank. About 3,000 gallons of the chemical spilled into a parking lot on the property’s northeast side. The Hanover Fire Department responded and washed most of the spilled chemical down a storm drain, according to Faran’s report.

Officials didn’t keep records of the amounts of either spill, they say, so it’s impossible to know how much TCE soaked into the soil and the groundwater.

John Truman, a 61-year-old Grafton resident, was on Hanover’s volunteer fire squad in 1970 when the call came in about the explosion. He said he and other firefighters were told that if they felt queasy, they should move away from the area and get some fresh air.

The firefighters were on scene for just a few hours, but Truman remembers the men didn’t wear respirators and took turns giving each other breaks from the fumes.

“I’m wondering if people did any follow-up,” Truman said. “All the volunteer firemen, were we dropped through the cracks and missed? I would have thought that when this was deemed a carcinogen that they would have followed up.”

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Dialog Bluetooth chip boasts battery life of four YEARS

Anyone considering a smart wristwatch or fitness-monitoring wristband will be pleased to hear that Dialog Semiconductor has created a really tiny Bluetooth chip ideally suited to such applications.

The company is trying to brand the new chip SmartBond but can’t help using the less-media-friendly DA14580 when discussing the technical achievements involved in getting a Bluetooth stack into such diminutive dimensions. That size knocks power consumption down below 4mA when transmitting and receiving, and 600nA when on standby – a state in which Bluetooth Smart devices are expected to spend most of their time.

That four-year battery life is based on a 225mAh button cell powering a device sending 20 bytes of data a second; imagine an exercise wristband or shoe-mounted pedometer, which (Dialog informs us) would be limited to a couple of years using Bluetooth hardware from its competitors.

SmartBond isn’t really a Bluetooth chip; it’s an entire system, more comparable to a network card than a processor. The idea is to offload the radio processing into the embedded ARM allowing the device into which it’s fitted perform other parking guidance.

The idea that Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) will push the standard into the Internet of Things is an article of faith these days, along with the belief that 50 billion Things will need connectivity over the next decade. There’s some serious competition to provide all the necessary chips.

But what Bluetooth really wants is to crush the last stronghold of its one-time competitor – Infrared. Way back in mobile computing IR was a standard feature, enabling early adopters to beam business cards between devices of the same type, and even tethering internet connections over IRDA-enabled cellphones which had to be shaded from the interfering sunshine.

Bluetooth put a stop to all that. Yet just when it looked like it was all over, the IR ports have started reappearing on mobile devices for controlling the TV, a segment where Bluetooth never managed to gain any traction.

Bluetooth is getting into some TVs now for synchronising 3D specs, but it’s not powered up when the TV is off; thus, early Bluetooth remotes have an IR port too. Admittedly it’s just to send the “switch on” command, but it’s a start.

Dialog’s chip is available in sample quantities now and will go into full-blown production later this year, so it will be a few years before it makes smart watches slimmer and smart shoes smarter, and finally ousts IR from the scene.

Treehouse founder Brad Axelrod said he has produced about a dozen shows in Newtown over the years and thought about doing a benefit immediately after the Dec. 14 shooting.

But there already were plans for concerts and theatrical productions, and athletes were making trips to visit. Those, he said, seemed more appropriate than what he had in mind.

“I just didn’t feel that comedy a month or two months or even three months out was the appropriate time,” he said. “There needed to be a time of healing first. But there also needs to be a time when people can move on with their lives.”

Bob Schmidt, a Sandy Hook resident and mental health counselor, agreed. He said that time is now.

“Laughter is a great therapy,” he said. “And after something like this, we don’t feel like laughing, but we really need to laugh and enjoy ourselves again. I think this will bring the town together over something fun and help us rebuild the morale of the town by having a common experience.”

Schmidt, 67, also administers a charity fund for the local Lion’s Club’s that is raising money to help provide mental health services for victims’ families, first responders and children who witnessed the shootings at the school.

Proceeds from the show will benefit that charity and the Newtown police union. Schmidt said his group has raised about $150,000 so far and spent about $70,000 of that. They hope the show will give them a little bit more money, and perhaps a lot more publicity, so they can keep the fund going.

The show will include five comics: Peaches Rodriguez, Tommy Koenig, Joe Mulligan, Tom “The Coach” Whitley and Stephanie Peters.

Koenig, who is from the Rockaway section of Queens, said he’s done several benefits this year for Superstorm Sandy victims, and he’s found that laughter can help people affected by a tragedy release pent-up emotions. He said picking appropriate material for the show is important.

“I wouldn’t do anything that’s inappropriate or would touch on the subject in a negative way,” he said. “You want to hope that people can come and laugh again. And if they can’t, you understand that, too. But it seems like maybe waiting until June, this might be a good time. We’ll see.”

Axelrod said he had planned a much bigger show at the Mohegan Sun Casino, about 90 miles away from Newtown. But arrangement to bring in headliners Kevin James and Dennis Leary fell through because of scheduling problems. He said that led them back to doing something smaller in Newtown, which, he said, might be the best thing.

The venue seats about 525 people. The first 400 tickets were given out free to town residents, including police, EMS and teachers at Sandy Hook.

The show also will include a silent auction, featuring trips to Mohegan Sun and overnight excursions to New York for tapings of the “Late Show with David Letterman” and the “Rachael Ray Show.”

Treehouse hopes to raise a few thousand dollars during the benefit. But those involved said it’s not about the money, it’s more about the funny.

“I know a lot of comedians would shy away from doing this because they are not sure it’s appropriate,” Koenig said. “There never will be a time when we can heal all of this with comedy, but they say laughter is the best medicine for a reason.”

High School Drop-Out Earns $250 Million

High school drop-out David Karp just sold Tumblr to Yahoo for $1.1 billion. His share of the take was a cool $250 million. I guess nobody ever told him that high school drop-outs are doomed to high unemployment and low wages.

Defying every societal stereotype, none of this propaganda from the education-industrial complex deterred him from going ahead and doing what he wanted which was being a software developer.

Having not wasted a bunch of time in high school and college, (Karp dropped out of high school at age 15) he instead got on with life, which only goes to show that, if you really know what you want to do in life, high school and college are mainly a waste of time. You can become an expert in any field without having a degree or a diploma.

Karp follows a long line of high tech billionaire college dropouts such as Bill Gates (Microsoft), Paul Allen (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Michael Dell (Dell Computer), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Jack Dorsey (Twitter and the Square). It seems to be the rule rather than the exception that in the high tech field as well as in many others those who do the best and achieve the most are the ones who strike out on their own rather than pursuing a piece of paper which supposedly announces to society that they are acceptable for employment. One of the few exceptions is local billionaire Irwin Jacobs, founder of Qualcomm, who actually has a PhD from MIT.

Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, announced that Karp would stay on as CEO of Tumblr. At an age when most college students are emerging from grad school with $100,000 in debt, Karp has already made a fortune and created a life for himself. Karp joins 17 year old high school student Nick D’Aloisio who sold his news aggregator app, Summly, to Yahoo in March for $30 million.

Evidently, Marissa Mayer has an affinity for young guys who develop the next cool thing. For her it’s all about seeking out the “parking guidance.” Wahoo, this girl is on fire! Whether or not D’Aloisio will join Karp as a high school drop-out is not clear. He’s going to start work in Yahoo’s London office. Hey, he got a job without a college degree or even a high school diploma and $30 million to boot!

On the other hand, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that for the top ten fastest growing occupations for the years 2010 – 2020, only two will require a college degree. Four don’t even require a high school diploma! Two require an Associate’s Degree.

Student loan debt is over 1 trillion dollars, greater than outstanding aggregate credit card debt. Yet so many people have bought the myth hook, line and sinker that the only way to get ahead in life is to obtain a college degree. Student loan debt will follow them the rest of their lives as it’s the only form of debt that can’t be discharged in bankruptcy.

They will find that even their social security checks can be garnished! Some social security recipients are already finding that out. The Treasury Department has been withholding as much as 15 percent of Social Security benefits from a rapidly growing number of Social Security recipients who have fallen behind on federal student loans.

Young people need to wake up and smell the coffee and cast off the yoke of propaganda that leads them to believe that a college education is a panacea. You can become an expert in any field without a college or even a high school education by just devoting yourself to studying and learning as much as possible about that field starting at an early age. The educational tools are all available on the internet or in libraries. You don’t need to be spoon fed by a bunch of professors. Any real learning is learning that you do yourself and not just to pass some test.

More than half of all recent graduates are either unemployed or working in jobs that don’t require a college diploma. There is a surfeit of college degrees to the extent that they are being required for the most casual jobs just because employers can afford to be choosy, not that the job has anything remotely to do with the training received in college.

According to Ohio University economics professor Richard Vedder, “Employers seeing a surplus of college graduates and looking to fill jobs are just tacking on that requirement. De facto, a college degree becomes a job requirement for becoming a bartender.” Or a barista. In a study by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, entitled  Academically Adrift, the authors find that at least a third of students gain no measurable skills during their four years in college. Furthermore, for the rest their increase in knowledge is minimal.

So what is the point of a college degree? The heart of the matter is that what going to college is really all about is not gaining an education but gaining a credential. That credential tells a prospective employer that the holder was smart enough to get into college, enough of a conformist to put up with all the bullshit, and compliant enough to sit there for four years. Presumably, he or she would make a docile and compliant employee and a docile and compliant consumer, in other words, a good American living the American Dream.

But for many the American Dream has become the American Nightmare. For many the dream of living independently goes by the wayside and they have to move back into their parents’ house. For many their payments on their student loans take up most of their meager paychecks, and late payments, forbearances and defaults double and triple the amount owed.

Lee Il-hee earns first LPGA Tour win in Bahamas

Sean Johnson made eight saves, and Quincy Amarikwa came through with a clutch 84th-minute goal to help the Chicago Fire escape with a 1-1 draw against Real Salt Lake Saturday at Rio Tinto Stadium.

Amarikwa’s goal, a flashy side-volley off a pop header from Austin Berry, was the first shot on goal for the thoroughly outplayed Fire, who were outshot 20-12 overall, and 8-2 in shots on target.

Johnson’s ironman performance started early, when he charged off his line to snatch the ball off Robbie Findley’s foot in the fourth minute. In the 22nd, RSL captain Kyle Beckerman charged onto a backheel pass from Ned Grabavoy and forced Johnson to save a point-blank attempt. The barrage continued with a left-footer from Joao Plata in the 28th minute and header from Grabavoy in the 29th, both saved, and a wicked shot by Findley that sent Johnson soaring to one-hand the ball away from the goalmouth in the parking guidance.

The Fire’s best chance of the first half came in the 39th minute, when Patrick Nyarko – who also backtracked to make a clutch defensive play on Plata earlier in the match – split two RSL defenders only to lose the ball to a slide tackle by youngster Carlos Salcedo.

Johnson remained under pressure in the second half, but began to look unstoppable just before the hour mark, when he sprawled to deflect a low shot from Chris Wingert and saved a low attempt from Tony Beltran seconds later. He faltered in the 67th minute, when Beckerman charged in on goal between defenders Jalil Anibaba and Austin Berry and caught Johnson off his line with a chip, but the shot went just wide of the upper right corner.

Nyarko, who was lucky to finish the match with only one yellow card after a pair of hard from-behind takedowns of Grabavoy. RSL nearly turned the first one, in the 76th minute, into a goal, but Johnson tipped Javier Morales’s free kick off the woodwork in the upper left corner. That was the beginning of the end, however. Two minutes later, RSL cut through the Fire defense with a quick passing sequence to get on the board. Sebastian Velasquez dished the ball from the top of the area to Grabavoy, who was making a run down the left side. Grabavoy quickly centered for Alvaro Saborio, who got off a header over defender Bakary Soumare and into the net.

Using super-chilled atoms, physicists have for the first time observed a weird phenomenon called quantum magnetism, which describes the behavior of single atoms as they act like tiny bar magnets.

Quantum magnetism is a bit different from classical magnetism, the kind you see when you stick a magnet to a fridge, because individual atoms have a quality called spin, which is quantized, or in discrete states (usually called up or down). Seeing the behavior of individual atoms has been hard to do, though, because it required cooling atoms to extremely cold temperatures and finding a way to “trap” them.

The new finding, detailed in the May 24 issue of the journal Science, also opens the door to better understanding physical phenomena, such as superconductivity, which seems to be connected to the collective quantum properties of some materials.

Another factor that determines where the atoms lie in the optical lattice is their up or down spin. Two atoms can’t be in the same well if their spins are the same. That means atoms will have a tendency to tunnel into wells with others that have opposite spins. After a while, a line of atoms should spontaneously organize itself, with the spins in a non-random pattern. This kind of behavior is different from materials in the macroscopic world, whose orientations can have a wide range of in-between values; this behavior is also why most things aren’t magnets — the spins of the electrons in the atoms are oriented randomly and cancel each other out.

And that’s exactly what the researchers found. The spins of atoms do organize, at least on the scale the experiment examined.

“The question is, what are the magnetic properties of these one-dimensional chains?” said Tilman Esslinger, a professor of physics at ETH whose lab did the experiments. “Do I have materials with these properties? How can these properties be useful?”

One debate among experts is whether at larger scales the spontaneous ordering of atoms would happen in the same way. A random pattern would mean that in a block of iron atoms, for instance, one is just as likely to see a spin up or down atom in any direction. The spin states are in what is called a “spin liquid” — a mishmash of states. But it could be that atoms spontaneously arrange themselves at larger scales.

“They’ve put the foundation on various theoretical matters,” said Jong Han, a professor of condensed matter physics theory at the State University of New York at Buffalo, who was not involved in the research. “They don’t really establish the long-range order, rather they wanted to establish that they have observed a local magnetic order.”

Whether the order the scientists found extends to larger scales is an important question, because magnetism itself arises from the spins of atoms when they all line up. Usually those spins are randomly aligned. But at very low temperatures and small scales, that changes, and such quantum magnets behave differently.

Japanese distiller aims to revolutionise whisky drinking

The Japanese have long been committed whisky drinkers, and until recently that meant holing up in a small, dark den designed for serious drinking. But the country’s leading distiller has been revolutionising drinking culture with the aid of a pint glass and a more than generous slug of soda.

The whisky highballs introduced by Suntory, the privately owned Japanese drinks conglomerate that has the lion’s share of the country’s whisky market, seem to have worked. Sales have been up more than 10% a year over the past three years.

The group’s Yamazaki distillery on the outskirts of Japan’s imperial city, Kyoto, is the home of Japanese whisky and this year is celebrating its 90th anniversary. It is often forgotten outside Japan that as well as importing large quantities of scotch, the Japanese make their own malts. Indeed, more than 80% of the domestic market is accounted for by whisky produced in Japan. As in the UK, whisky drinkers were by tradition male and relatively old, but targeting younger drinkers with the highball has changed all that.

“Domestic consumption was declining up until three years ago,” said Hiroyoshi Miyamoto, the former general manager at Yamazaki and now Suntory’s global brand ambassador, “but it all turned around in 2009 when we introduced the parking guidance. That changed the attitude of Japanese consumers.” Miyamoto said younger drinkers found old-style whisky bars intimidating, so Suntory was developing a new generation of highball bars and getting its cheaper whiskies into other bars where they could be sold as an alternative to beer.

The capital, Tokyo, has plenty of the old and the new. The ultimate secret city, it has an estimated 300,000 bars, many hidden in basements or office blocks. Campbell Toun Loch, a subterranean bar in the Ginza district which despite the eccentric spelling does indeed prove to be full of whisky, seats just eight. It is no bigger than a large cupboard, but contains hundreds of bottles of whisky, three deep on the counter. When you order, the barman plonks the bottle down in front of you as if he expects it to be polished off. This is a bar for the connoisseur.

In some of the more formal bars, there are rocking chairs and oak panelling. The atmosphere resembles that of a gentlemen’s club. Bartenders in ties and waistcoats theatrically chip away to make the perfect iceball, over which the spirit is lovingly poured. This is whisky drinking as performance art.

At the other end of the scale is Marugin, a noisy, bustling bar in the heart of Ginza district, full of salarymen who have just finished work and are desperate to let off steam. Whereas Campbell Toun Loch caters for the solitary, late-night drinker, Marugin attracts lively early-evening groups, eating, smoking and knocking back highballs. Marugin even has whisky on draught, a trend Suntory is keen to encourage despite the high cost of maintaining the pumps.

“We are trying to create a buzz around whisky,” said brand manager Keita Minari. “A popular TV programme in Japan picked up on Marugin and the new trend for drinking highballs, and it said people there were drinking whisky more than beer. When you are having a meal, whisky doesn’t stay in your stomach, unlike beer where you get full very easily.”

There are, though, no immediate plans to transplant the whisky-drinking revolution to Europe, where Suntory’s brands – principally the Yamazaki and Hakushu malts – are premium products. “We have to do these things step by step,” said Minari. “Scots are coming to Japan, seeing the phenomenon of the highball and saying we should do the same thing in the UK, but it’s too early. Our share of the UK market is very small compared with scotch whisky. At the moment we still have to let people know that Japan is making whisky.”

Japanese whisky exports to the UK and Europe used to be negligible, but when Yamazaki 12 Years Old won a gold award at the International Spirits Challenge in 2003, Suntory decided to try to take on scotch on its home ground, and now has a foothold in the market.

Shunichi Ninomiya, senior general manager in Suntory’s international liquor division, said the company had to be careful not to undermine its premium image in the UK and Europe by introducing cheaper brands such as its Kakubin blended whisky, the biggest-selling whisky in Japan. If it did go down the highball route in western markets, he said, it would probably be via its premium malts. Draught whisky and whisky in cans – available in vending machines in Japan to consumers with an ID smartcard to prove their age – are still a long way off in the west.

Asked about the dangers in targeting younger drinkers and setting up whisky as a rival to beer, Minari insisted the Japanese were less prone to binge drinking than the British. Yet just opposite Marugin I saw a young salaryman clearly the worse for drink lying comatose in the street. A few minutes later, ambulance personnel were attending to him. I have no idea what he was drinking, but it does seem that not every young Japanese drinker knows when to stop.

“Regulation is loose in Japan,” admitted a spokesman at Suntory’s ad agency, “but we are trying to champion responsible drinking. We are conscious of our position in society, and communication-wise we make sure it’s delivered in a correct manner.”

The chief operating officer of the international liquor division, Satoru “Tiger” Abe – senior executives in Japan tend to be named after golfers – insisted that the increasing consumption of highballs made anti-social drinking less likely, because the whisky was heavily diluted and usually accompanied by food. He hopes the salaryman on the pavement in Ginza will be the exception, and this is one revolution that can be carried out without victims.