Long List Of Virologists Mysteriously Being Killed Or ‘Suicided’

Had the link already posted here:

NIH Scientist Martin Rogers Found Dead — Dead Scientists 2004-2014


Long list of virologists mysteriously being killed or ‘suicided’ (Natural News, Sep 11, 2014):

Since 2004, a string of scientists have died, many under mysterious circumstances, and now some in the alternative media have begun asking why.

The most recent scientist was found dead after a strange disappearance, but he wasn’t just any scientist: He was employed not by academia but by the federal government’s National Institutes of Health in Maryland, according to a website called All News Pipeline, which has been tracking and reporting the strange deaths.

The recently deceased, Dr. Martin John Rogers, specialized in tropical diseases, the website reported, and malaria in particular. “This death alone, despite the mysterious circumstances, normally wouldn’t be of note if it wasn’t for the long… very long list of dead scientists already documented since 2004,” the website reported. Much of that documentation can be found here: SteveQuayle.com.

Read moreLong List Of Virologists Mysteriously Being Killed Or ‘Suicided’

NIH Scientist Martin Rogers Found Dead — Dead Scientists 2004-2014

So which one is it, ‘in’ or ‘near’ the car?

Just a pitty that the following list does not start from Sep. 11, 2001.

Don’t miss: Dead Scientists 2004-2014


NIH Scientist Martin Rogers Found Dead (NBC News, Sep 4, 2014):

About two weeks after he went missing, police announced an NIH scientist has been found dead in his car.

Martin John Rogers, 54, left his Gaithersburg home around 7:30 a.m. on Aug. 21 to go to work. As he was leaving, he told his wife of 25 years that he was going to a meeting — but his co-workers said he never showed up to work that morning.

“This is like a bad dream that you read about in the newspaper, and if you tried to pick someone that would wander off like this and disappear, you would never pick my husband,” said Kelley Rogers, Martin’s wife.

Martin Rogers had worked at the National Institutes of Health for 15 years and specialized in tropical diseases.

Police said surveillance video captured Martin checking into a hotel in La Valle, Maryland, looking “stressed out.” Last week, police received multiple reports of possible sightings along the C&O Canal towpath, including by Edwards Ferry, near Poolesville, Violettes Lock near Darnestown, and as far away as Cumberland.

In a news release late Thursday night, Montgomery County Police announced Rogers’ body was found near an abandoned car parked close to MV Smith Road in Allegany County. Police say they believe foul play was not involved.

abandoned car parked close to MV Smith Road in Allegany County. Police say they believe foul play was not involved.

Scientists: Starfish Wasting Disease Outbreak Could Be Due To Fukushima Radiation

Starfish Wasting Disease outbreak could be due to radiation (News1130, Dec 30, 2013):

Scientist says radiation from nuclear plant damaged by 2011 earthquake can’t be ruled out

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Researchers say nuclear pollution from the 2011 earthquake in Japan that damaged the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant could be partially to blame for a disease wiping out starfish along the West Coast.

Dr. Peter Raimondi of the University of Santa Cruz says something is making starfish susceptible to whats believed to be a bacteria coined “Wasting Disease.” It essentially disintegrate the marine invertebrates into a white goo, after the starfish loses its legs.

He says what’s making sea stars unable to fight off the bacteria could be anything from warm water to toxins–but Raimondi also says scientists can’t rule out nuclear pollution, especially in light of the tsunami that followed the 2011 earthquake.

Read moreScientists: Starfish Wasting Disease Outbreak Could Be Due To Fukushima Radiation

Unprecedented Decline In Alaska King Salmon

See also:

Mystery Illness Killing Bald Eagles In Western U.S. – Wings Paralyzed, Full Blown Seizures


Newspaper: Unprecedented declines in Alaska king salmon… related to impact from Fukushima? No comment, says NOAA biologist — Record low numbers seen in major fishery on Canada’s west coast, “alarming decrease” (ENENews, Dec 29, 2013):

Juneau Empire, Dec. 29, 2013: […] the king [chinook] salmon — has fallen from its throne. […] Alaska has seen unprecedented declines in recent years […] scientists like Joe Orsi and Jim Murphy, both fisheries research biologists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, are digging deeper into […] the cause of the startling downward trend. […] When asked about the potential impact Fukushima may be having on king salmon stocks in the Gulf of Alaska and elsewhere in the state, Orsi would not comment. “I’ve been told to refer you to the (Environmental Protection Agency),” he said, “Because I’m not an expert on the topic.” Calls and emails to the EPA were not returned in time and digging on the federal agency’s site revealed no current information on radiation from the Fukushima disaster. The last posted monitoring results occurred in June of 2011.

img_483-Dec.-29-18.41-300x227

Bellingham Herald, Dec. 5, 2013: “[…] we see from test fisheries that the Chinook numbers returning to the Fraser River system were at a record low,” explained Ken Balcomb, executive director and principal investigator for The Center for Research and a science advisor to the whale watch association. […] [An] alarming decrease of an important identified food resource […]

Islander Sound, Dec. 25, 2013: [A] dismal return of Chinook salmon to the Fraser River.

Read moreUnprecedented Decline In Alaska King Salmon

‘Stop GMOs’: Russian Scientists Urge 10-Year Ban On Genetically Modified Products

‘Stop GMOs’: Russian scientists urge 10-year ban on genetically modified products (RT, Dec 16, 2013):

Russian scientists are calling for a 10-year moratorium on GMOs to thoroughly study their influence on human health, stressing that such examinations are vital.

“It is necessary to ban GMO, to impose moratorium [on it] for 10 years. While GMO will be prohibited, we can plan experiments, tests, or maybe even new methods of research could be developed,” vice president of Russia’s National Association for Genetic Safety, Irina Ermakova, told Interfax news agency.

Read more‘Stop GMOs’: Russian Scientists Urge 10-Year Ban On Genetically Modified Products

Just Who Has Been Killing Iran’s Nuclear Scientists?


Grim toll: The bombed car of Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, who was killed in January 2012 – one of five to die since 2007

Just who has been killing Iran’s nuclear scientists? (Independent, Oct 6, 2013):

World View: The timing of the latest shot in a covert war invites questions about the role of proxies

What to make of the latest alleged assassination in Iran of a senior officer in the Revolutionary Guards just as Iran and the US move towards negotiations? Is it a last-minute attempt by Israel or the Iranian dissident group the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) to sabotage talks – or at least to show that they are still players in the decades-long struggle between the government in Tehran and its many antagonists?

The first account on an Iranian website stated that Mojtaba Ahmadi, the head of Iranian cyber warfare, had been found shot in the head outside Tehran. The Revolutionary Guards issued a statement denying that he had been assassinated, but admitted there had been a “horrific incident” which it was investigating. The killing appeared to be the latest in a string of killings, since 2007, in which five Iranians associated with the country’s nuclear programme have been murdered in professional attacks. Men on motorcycles operating on the basis of good intelligence have stuck magnetically attachable bombs to their victims’ cars.

The timing of Ahmadi’s assassination looks suspicious, coming a few days after the Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani, addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations and later spoke to President Barack Obama by telephone. Not everybody on either side is happy: the head of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammed Ali Jafari, even stated openly that, while he agreed with Rouhani’s UN speech, “he should have turned down a telephone conversation until after the American government had shown its sincerity towards Iran”.

Read moreJust Who Has Been Killing Iran’s Nuclear Scientists?

Scientists ‘Grow’ A Brain In A Laboratory For The First Time

Scientists ‘grow’ a brain in a laboratory for the first time (Independent, Aug 28, 2013):

Organ created from skin cells is equivalent in development to that of a human foetus at nine weeks

Scientists have grown miniature human brains from skin cells in a laboratory for the first time as part of a study into the development of the most complex of all our organs, and the ultimate source of human creativity and consciousness.

The mini-brains are less than 4mm across but researchers say  that they are equivalent in development to the brain of a human foetus at about nine weeks’ gestation, and even have the complex three-dimensional structure of a real embryonic brain.

Read moreScientists ‘Grow’ A Brain In A Laboratory For The First Time

Creating A Super Flu Virus: COMPLETELY MAD Scientists To Do H7N9 Influenza Experiments

Flashback:

China: Scientists Created New Deadly Viral Strains In Veterinary Laboratory By Mixing Bird-Flu Virus With Human Influenza That Could ‘Cause A Global Pandemic Killing Millions of People’

Scientists Push To Resume Research On Deadly Man-Made Flu Virus

All 40 H5N1 Exposed Ferrets DIED:

….air flowed into the next cage. killing all 40 exposed ferrets.

US Government Paid Dutch Researchers To Mutate Deadly H5N1 Virus And Make It Go AIRBORNE!!!

Scientists Develop Deadly Strain Of Bird Flu That Could Kill Millions, Want To Publish Full Details Of How They Did It


Creating A Super Flu Virus: Scientists Set Course For Controversial H7N9 Influenza Experiments (Medical Daily, Aug 7, 2013):

Two letters published in the journals Nature and Science argue for the commencement of research on the H7N9 influenza that may yield more potent strains of the new flu virus that emerged in China earlier this year.

To fully assess the potential risk associated with these novel viruses, there is a need for additional research including experiments that may be classified as “gain-of-function,” wrote virologist Ron Fuchier of Erasmus Medical Center (Netherlands) and 21 other world-renowned scientists.

Read moreCreating A Super Flu Virus: COMPLETELY MAD Scientists To Do H7N9 Influenza Experiments

‘Even The Very Lowest Levels Of Radiation Are Harmful To Life’

Even low-level radioactivity is damaging (University of South California, Nov 13, 2012):

Broad analysis of many radiation studies finds no exposure threshold that precludes harm to life

Even the very lowest levels of radiation are harmful to life, scientists have concluded in the Cambridge Philosophical Society’s journal Biological Reviews. Reporting the results of a wide-ranging analysis of 46 peer-reviewed studies published over the past 40 years, researchers from the University of South Carolina and the University of Paris-Sud found that variation in low-level, natural background radiation had small, but highly statistically significant, negative effects on DNA as well as several measures of health.

Read more‘Even The Very Lowest Levels Of Radiation Are Harmful To Life’

GM Wheat May Damage Human Genetics Permanently

GM Wheat May Damage Human Genetics Permanently (GreenMedInfo, Oct 18, 2012):

The Australian government, in the form of its science research arm, is joining Agribusiness profiteering by designing a GM wheat that could kill people who eat it & be inherited by their children.

We have not yet seen the worst damage that genetic engineering may do. Australia’s governmental agency, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), is developing a wheat species that is engineered to turn off genes permanently.

Professor Jack Heinemann at the University of Canterbury’s Centre for Integrated Research in Biosafety  has studied the wheat’s potential. Digital Journal reports that he says1:

What we found is that the molecules created in this wheat, intended to silence wheat genes, can match human genes, and through ingestion, these molecules can enter human beings and potentially silence our genes. The findings are absolutely assured. There is no doubt that these matches exist.

The implications are clarified by Professor Judy Carman of Flinders University:

If this silences the same gene in us that it silences in the wheat—well, children who are born with this enzyme not working tend to die by the age of about five.

Silencing the equivalent gene in humans that is silenced in this genetically modified wheat holds the potential of killing people. But it gets worse. Silenced genes are permanently silenced and can be passed down the generations.

Read moreGM Wheat May Damage Human Genetics Permanently

Scientists Turn Fresh Air Into Petrol

Exclusive: Pioneering scientists turn fresh air into petrol in massive boost in fight against energy crisis (Independent, Oct 19, 2012):

A small British company has produced the first “petrol from air” using a revolutionary technology that promises to solve the energy crisis as well as helping to curb global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Air Fuel Synthesis in Stockton-on-Tees has produced five litres of petrol since August when it switched on a small refinery that manufactures gasoline from carbon dioxide and water vapour.

Read moreScientists Turn Fresh Air Into Petrol

Chinese Scientists Unveil Mind-Controlled Drone (Video)


Chinese researchers have unveiled a system that allows users to control drones with their thoughts (Screenshot from video / courtesy Youtube user CCNTLab)

Think hard to fly: Chinese scientists unveil mind-controlled drone (RT, Sep 2, 2012):

Chinese researchers have unveiled a system that allows users to control drones with their thoughts. The technology was designed to help handicapped people, but could have ample applications in other fields as well.

A video posted to YouTube by researchers at Zhejiang University shows how the system, called Flybuddy2, works. And it appears that you don’t have to be a nuclear scientist to build one. All you need is an EEG headset with a Bluetooth connection to a laptop – plus a quadrotor Parrot AR Drone linked to the computer.


YouTube

The computer can receive EEG signals via Bluetooth and convert them to specific commands to control the AR drones through WiFi,” a presenter explains.

Read moreChinese Scientists Unveil Mind-Controlled Drone (Video)

Neuroscientists Successfully Control The Dreams Of Rats. Could Humans Be Next?

Flashback:

‘Brain’ in a dish flies flight simulator (CNN):

A Florida scientist has developed a “brain” in a glass dish that is capable of flying a virtual fighter plane and could enhance medical understanding of neural disorders such as epilepsy.

The “living computer” was grown from 25,000 neurons extracted from a rat’s brain and arranged over a grid of 60 electrodes in a Petri dish.


Neuroscientists successfully control the dreams of rats. Could humans be next? (io9, Sep 3, 2012):

Researchers working at MIT have successfully manipulated the content of a rat’s dream by replaying an audio cue that was associated with the previous day’s events, namely running through a maze (what else). The breakthrough furthers our understanding of how memory gets consolidated during sleep — but it also holds potential for the prospect of “dream engineering.”Working at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, neuroscientist Matt Wilson was able to accomplish this feat by exploiting the way the brain’s hippocampus encodes self-experienced events into memory. Scientists know that our hippocampus is busy at work replaying a number of the day’s events while we sleep — a process that’s crucial for memory consolidation. But what they did not know was whether or not these “replays” could be influenced by environmental cues.

Read moreNeuroscientists Successfully Control The Dreams Of Rats. Could Humans Be Next?

Marie-Monique Robin: ‘Unser täglich Gift’ – ‘Notre Poison Quotidien’ (Documentary – Full Length – In German And French)

Must-see … for those who understand German and/or French.


Unser täglich Gift

YouTube

Notre Poison quotidien


YouTube

Discovery Of Magnetic Sensors In Fish And Rats May Explain Why Some People Can ‘Feel’ Wi-Fi, Smart Meters, Power Lines And Electropollution

Discovery of magnetic sensors in fish and rats may explain why some people can ‘feel’ wi-fi, smart meters, power lines and electropollution (Natural News, July 11, 2012):

It is well known that many people are sensitive to electromagnetic pollution. Wi-fi gives them headaches. Being near high-voltage power lines can bring on migraines. Using a cell phone unleashes similar symptoms. Until recently, there was no medically-understood mechanism by which electromagnetic waves could be sensed by humans. But now, thanks to some fascinating science summarized here, that mystery may be closer to being solved.

Scientists from the University of Munich, led by geophysicist Michael Winklhofer, say they’ve located and identified “internal compass needles” in the noses of rainbow trout. These are called magnetosensory cells, and they turn out to be far more sensitive to magnetic fields than anyone previously thought.

As TGdaily.com reports: (http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/64572-source-of-anim…)

The cells sense the field by means of micrometer-sized inclusions composed of magnetic crystals, probably made of magnetite. These inclusions are coupled to the cell membrane, changing the electrical potential across the membrane when the crystals realign in response to a change in the ambient magnetic field.

“This explains why low-frequency magnetic fields generated by powerlines disrupt navigation relative to the geomagnetic field and may induce other physiological effects,” said Winklhofer.

Electro-smog is getting worse by the day

Read moreDiscovery Of Magnetic Sensors In Fish And Rats May Explain Why Some People Can ‘Feel’ Wi-Fi, Smart Meters, Power Lines And Electropollution

Physicists At CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Discover New Subatomic Particle That Looks Like The Higgs Boson

Particle’s Discovery Points to a Firmer Grasp of Physics (The New York Times, July 4, 2012):

ASPEN, Colo. — Physicists working at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider said Wednesday that they had discovered a new subatomic particle that looks for all the world like the Higgs boson, a potential key to an understanding of why elementary particles have mass and indeed to the existence of diversity and life in the universe.

“I think we have it,” Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the director general of CERN, said in an interview from his office outside Geneva, calling the discovery “a historic milestone.” His words signaled what is probably the beginning of the end for one of the longest, most expensive searches in the history of science. If scientists are lucky, the discovery could lead to a new understanding of how the universe began.

Read morePhysicists At CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Discover New Subatomic Particle That Looks Like The Higgs Boson

God Particle Is ‘Found’: Scientists At Cern Expected To Announce Discovery Of Higgs Boson Particle

God particle is ‘found’: Scientists at Cern expected to announce on Wednesday Higgs boson particle has been discovered (Daily Mail, July 1, 2012):

  • Scientists ‘will say they are 99.99% certain’ the particle has been found
  • Leading physicists have been invited to event – sparking speculation that Higgs boson particle has been found
  • ‘God Particle’ gives particles that make up atoms their mass
  • Fermi Lab in Chicago also ‘closing in’ on proof of Higgs boson

Scientists at Cern will announce that the elusive Higgs boson ‘God Particle’ has been found at a press conference next week, it is believed.

Five leading theoretical physicists have been invited to the event on Wednesday – sparking speculation that the particle has been discovered.

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider are expected to say they are 99.99 per cent certain it has been found – which is known as ‘four sigma’ level.

Read moreGod Particle Is ‘Found’: Scientists At Cern Expected To Announce Discovery Of Higgs Boson Particle

Scientists Find Every Southern California Tuna To Be Contaminated With Fukushima Radiation

From the article:

“We found that absolutely every one of them had comparable concentrations of cesium-134 and cesium-137,” said marine biologist Nicholas Fisher at Stony Brook University in New York state, who was part of the study group. “It is crystal-clear data.”

On the low-level radiation myth:

Columbia Medical Professor: Inhaling Just One Radioactive Hot Particle Can Cause Cancer (Video)

Are There Safe Levels of Radiation? How Much Radiation Is Safe?


U.S. Tuna Has Fukushima Taint (Wall Street Journal, Updated May 29, 2012):

Pacific bluefin tuna migrating last year from coastal Japan to the waters off Southern California contained radioactive cesium isotopes from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, scientists reported Monday.

The amount of radioactivity in the fish was one-tenth the level the U.S. and Japan consider dangerous, and likely posed no public-health hazard or risk to people who ate the seafood, the scientists said. But the study showed for the first time that migrating sea life rapidly brought traces of radioactive elements from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors across vast distances.

“The tuna packaged it up and brought it across the world’s largest ocean,” said marine ecologist Daniel Madigan at Stanford University, who led the study team. “We were definitely surprised to see it at all and even more surprised to see it in every one we measured.”

Their findings raise the possibility that other wide-ranging sea life that foraged near Japan, such as turtles, sharks and seabirds, may also have carried low levels of radioactive cesium from the accident around the Pacific basin. The scientists expect to conduct more tests on migrating bluefin as well as albacore tuna, sea turtles, and several shark species this summer.

Read moreScientists Find Every Southern California Tuna To Be Contaminated With Fukushima Radiation

Autoradiography Of Dead Fukushima Bird By Prof. Mori Of Tokyo University

How contaminated a bird is in Fukushima (Fukushima Diary, April 29, 2012):

Prof. Mori of Tokyo university took a picture of a bush warbler in Fukushima by autoradiography.

It took one month to capture the radiation from cesium 137.

The bush warbler was found dead in Iidate mura last December.

This photo was taken from the stomach of the bird. Black spots in the wing parts show radioactive particles stuck to the wings.

The ones in the body parts show the radioactive particles taken into the body.

Biological concentration is assumed to have happened through contaminated worms.

Read moreAutoradiography Of Dead Fukushima Bird By Prof. Mori Of Tokyo University

Why Nuclear Scientists Have Missed The Danger Of Spent Fuel Pools … ‘Even Loss Of Circulation Of Coolant Will Lead To Overheating Of The Fuel And Extensive Fuel Damage’

Why Nuclear Scientists Have Missed the Danger of Spent Fuel Pools (Akio Matsumura, Jan 23, 2012):

Dear friends:

Since the Fukushima nuclear power plants accident in March 2011, there have been two types of contributions by nuclear scientists. One type, who represents the voice of TEPCO, has influenced the decision makers of the solutions to the accident, the government strategy of the evacuation zone, the timing of announcement of the core meltdown and the constant public campaign to give the impression that the situation is improving rapidly. The other type, who has been warning the government of the worsening situation, finds their influence over the decision makers and the media circle limited. However, I find it puzzling that there has been so little warning from the nuclear community about the potential for catastrophic accidents or terrorist attack involving the hundreds of spent fuel pools worldwide.  I received a clear explanation from Dr. Gordon Edwards, one of Canada’s best known independent experts on nuclear technology, uranium, and weapons proliferation.

I hope you will better appreciate the serious issues of the spent fuel pools from these comments.

Akio

This article is now available in Japanese.

Dear Akio,

You asked me why there has been so little warning from the “nuclear establishment” (TEPCO and the regulatory agency) about the potential for catastrophic accidents involving the spent fuel pool in reactor number 4.

In the field of nuclear safety, the focus of attention has always been on analyzing and preventing catastrophic accidents involving the core of the reactor.  In comparison, little attention has been paid over the years to catastrophic accident scenarios involving the spent fuel pool.

Since the very first US Reactor Safety Study, the “Brookhaven Report” in 1957, to the major 12-volume US NRC Reactor Safety Study (the Rasmussen Report) of 1974, and continuing right down to the present day, virtually all of the attention has been directed to extreme conditions that might develop in the core of the reactor — unterminated power excursions, loss of coolant accidents, breach of the reactor vessel, core meltdowns, and so on.

Most nuclear engineers and nuclear regulators have developed a “blind spot” about the catastrophe potential associated with the spent fuel bay because of years of neglect. Such considerations have never played a significant role in their training as nuclear engineers or in their many subsequent years of experience in the field of nuclear safety analysis.

As a result we have backup pumps, backup electrical supply systems, and backup cooling systems for the core of the reactor, but no backup pumps or electrical supply or cooling system for the spent fuel bay. We have extravagant containment systems for the core of the reactor, but no comparable containment systems for the spent fuel pool.

This absence of backup systems for the spent fuel pool is testimony to the lack of effort and lack of forethought that has been devoted to the spent fuel bay. Nevertheless, the radioactive inventory in the spent fuel pool is often much greater  than that in the core of the reactor, and a prolonged loss of coolant — or even loss of circulation of coolant — will lead to overheating of the fuel and extensive fuel damage.  This will result in significant releases of radioactive fission products into the atmosphere due to the inadequate or even non-existent containment provided for the spent fuel pool.

Moreover, a loss of coolant in the spent fuel pool — whether by leakage, spillage, or  boiling off of the cooling water — will lead to intense gamma radiation that would prevent human access for hundreds of metres in all directions around the spent fuel pool, making it very difficult to take corrective actions.

Read moreWhy Nuclear Scientists Have Missed The Danger Of Spent Fuel Pools … ‘Even Loss Of Circulation Of Coolant Will Lead To Overheating Of The Fuel And Extensive Fuel Damage’

Researcher Of Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science And Technology Arrested

Researcher of Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology arrested (Fukushima Diary, April 28, 2012):

Following up this article..Cesium from Fukushima reached to 5000m deep in the sea in April

Mr. Agata Yasushi (43), a technical chief of Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology was arrested for home-invasion.

Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology found out cesium reached 5000m deep in ocean at 2000km away from Fukushima by 4/2011.

Read moreResearcher Of Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science And Technology Arrested

Huge Water Resource Exists Under Africa, Say Scientists

‘Huge’ water resource exists under Africa (BBC News, April 20, 2012):

Scientists say the notoriously dry continent of Africa is sitting on a vast reservoir of groundwater.

They argue that the total volume of water in aquifers underground is 100 times the amount found on the surface.

The team have produced the most detailed map yet of the scale and potential of this hidden resource.

Read moreHuge Water Resource Exists Under Africa, Say Scientists

‘The Chernobyl Zone Is A Population Sink, Or An Ecological Trap’ For Birds, Says Biologist Tim Mousseau, Expects Fukushima To Be Even Worse

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

A year after Fukushima, the government has asked residents to bury radiated soil in their own backyards. But how dangerous is the dirt and where should it go? NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel reports.

Fewer female birds after Chernobyl, study finds; same true at Fukushima? (MSNBC, April 19, 2012):

Scientists are focusing on Japan’s Fukushima area after a study published this week found an alarming development at another nuclear disaster site — Chernobyl.

The proportion of female birds has fallen off since the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl, the study found, and that appears to be causing male birds to increase their chirping in efforts to find a mate.

“The Chernobyl zone is a population sink, or an ecological trap, that brings in new birds each year but these birds suffer lower survival,” co-author Tim Mousseau, a University of South Carolina biologist, told msnbc.com.

“In other words,” he said, “the Chernobyl zone is not an eden for wildlife” as some have claimed.

Mousseau, who’s leading a team along with Anders Pape Moller of the University of Paris-Sud, is now in the Fukushima area preparing to test birds there for radioactivity from the nuclear reactors hit by the tsunami after the March 11, 2011, earthquake.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

NBC’s Richard Engel visits the exclusion zone surrounding Japan’s damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

“We will be placing small dosimeters on birds and measuring body content of radionuclides,” he said. That will also be done this summer around Ukraine’s Chernobyl area, where earlier testing focused on counting birds.

For the Chernobyl study “we collected 1,080 birds using mist nets in forested areas that were highly contaminated but also in areas that were effectively ‘clean’ and sites in between,” Mousseau explained.

In the more contaminated areas, most birds were yearlings, suggesting that survival rates were significantly lower in these areas than in clean ones.”

Read more‘The Chernobyl Zone Is A Population Sink, Or An Ecological Trap’ For Birds, Says Biologist Tim Mousseau, Expects Fukushima To Be Even Worse

DARPA: Hybrid Insect Micro Electromechanical Systems (HI-MEMS)

Hybrid Insect Micro Electromechanical Systems (HI-MEMS) (DARPA):

Olfactory training of bees has been used to locate mines and weapons of mass destruction. The Hybrid Insect Micro Electromechanical Systems (HI-MEMS) program is aimed at developing technology to provide control over insect locomotion, just as reins are needed for effective control over horse locomotion.

HI-MEMS-derived technologies will enable many robotic capabilities at low cost, impacting the development of future autonomous defense systems. The realization of cyborgs will provide compact platforms that use highly efficient biological systems developed over millions of years of evolution. HI-MEMS platforms will extend the duration and improve the capability of microbotic missions due to the combined efficiency of biochemical energy storage (fat) and bio-actuators (muscle) compared to traditional chemical energy storage (battery) and actuators (motors).  The basic technology developed in this program will also serve as a biological tool to understand and control insect development, opening vistas in our understanding of tissue development and providing new technological pathways to harness the natural sensors and power generation of insects.

Read moreDARPA: Hybrid Insect Micro Electromechanical Systems (HI-MEMS)