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Geo-engineering – the confident technocrat’s last resort solution to catastrophic climate change – could create damaging conditions of its own, according to new research.
Simone Tilmes of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, in the US and an international team of colleagues report in Geophysical Research Letters: Atmospheres that at least one deliberate technological strategy to limit global warming could reduce seasonal rainfall, including the monsoons of Asia that provide a lifeline to hundreds of millions.
Senior scientists have in the last decade tentatively considered technological responses to climate change on the basis that economies, politicians and consumers show no sign of making the dramatic reductions in fossil fuel use that would cut the greenhouse gas emissions that fuel global warming.
Among these responses is a relatively simple one. If greenhouse gases go on increasing, then more solar heat will be trapped in the atmosphere. So, the world should think of a way to reduce solar radiation instead: spray sulphate particles into the stratosphere to block incoming sunlight, or even place arrays of mirrors into orbit to reflect a proportion of the sunlight away from the Earth.
So the scientists used 12 different climate models to simulate various possible futures, including one based on historical factors in which carbon dioxide did not just double, but reached four times the levels in the atmosphere during the American Revolution, and the Napoleonic wars that ravaged Europe at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
They found – not surprisingly – that a greenhouse world would be matched by a significant increase in rainfall in many places, along with prolonged droughts in others. That would happen because more warmth means more evaporation, greater saturation of the atmosphere and consequently more precipitation.
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New Zealand's last remaining analogue TV signals were closed down in the early hours of this morning, ushering Kiwi viewers into a new era of digital-only television.
To mark the event, Broadcasting Minister Craig Foss and Going Digital mascot Seymour the Digital Dog completed the shut-down process at the Waiatarua transmission site in West Auckland.
"The shut-down of analogue TV services across the Upper North Island, ends a three-year campaign to migrate viewers to digital TV services," Going Digital National Manager Greg Harford said.
"Going digital offers viewers more channels, better pictures and new services, but also frees up radio spectrum for next-generation mobile phone and mobile broadband services, which are expected to be faster and cheaper in the long-run.
"Going Digital has run a comprehensive community outreach and marketing campaign over three years to alert viewers to changes in the way TV is broadcast," said Mr Harford.
"The nation has gone digital in four stages over the past 15 months, and from today Upper North Island viewers will only be able to watch TV if they have Freeview, Sky or Igloo. While not all viewers have made the transition, experience from other parts of the country suggests that those who have not gone digital ahead of the deadline will do so over the coming days."
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There are a lot of great developments going on in Buffalo for the time being: Canalside restoration efforts are beautifying the waterfront, the HARBORCENTER will draw elite youth hockey talent and many spectators, and the new UB medical school will offer the region’s first comprehensive academic medical center – to name a few. But even if many of Buffalo’s faithful citizens aren’t aware, the announcement of not one, but two new manufacturing tenants in the heart of South Buffalo could trump them all.
On November 21 Gov. Andrew Cuomo (NY-D) shared the momentous news of the state’s successful effort to draw a pair of high-tech giants to Buffalo’s waterfront. The Buffalo News quoted Cuomo saying, “It’s probably the most exciting economic development announcement that we’ve had statewide since I’ve been governor. This project, I believe, is a game changer for Western New York.”
Dubbed the Buffalo High-Tech Manufacturing Innovation Hub at RiverBend, six 275,000 square-foot facilities (one each for the new tenants, the remaining four buildings remain vacant for now) will house the new companies at the old Republic Steel site. The development is a huge gain for South Buffalo, as is at least 850 new permanent jobs for a region that has clamored for decades to develop quality employment. State officials noted during the announcement that approximately 800 of those jobs will go to those living in the Buffalo Niagara region.
Soraa, the world’s leading developer of solid-state LED lighting technology built on pure gallium nitride substrates, as stated on their website, will generate 375 new jobs. The company was founded in 2008 in California, and has seen strong growth in a few short years. Their business model revolves around being the world’s best LED light-maker through innovation, which was spotlighted in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in April. Their latest LED creation generates 40 percent more light than standard halogen LED bulbs while cutting power consumption by 80-85 percent. “We really pushed the envelope of what is possible,” said Soraa Chief Executive Eric Kim in the WSJ piece.
The remaining 475 permanent jobs will be through Silevo, a solar panel manufacturer founded in Silicon Valley in 2007. Currently the company manufactures out of its California headquarters, as well as a facility in China. In terms of panel efficiency, Silevo’s solar panels are on the higher end of most high-volume solar panel manufacturers (21 percent, compared to 14-16 percent for most others), according to ThinkProgress earlier this year.
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December 12, 11:00 a.m. EST
To remain competitive, telcos have been forced to drastically reduce their expenditures and push their copper plants to the limits. But if many assumed FTTH was the only way to win the race of expanding bandwidth to the homes, recent advances in DSL technologies, namely bonding, vectoring and soon/upcoming G.fast, could be the cost efficient alternative they've been waiting for.
In this webinar, you will learn about the following:
- Recent DSL technology breakthroughs and their driving factors
- Latest standards, including G. Fast and vectoring, and when to expect updates
- Market dynamics and trends from a test perspective
- Methodologies and best practices in testing
Last year I blogged about a new study: the Journal of the American Medical Association confirms that exposure to “air pollutants–in some cases for a single day–increases the chance” of heart attack.
A newly released study focused on industrial pollutants found that congenital heart defects are strongly associated with mixtures of toxic air pollutants. The list of toxins are the same toxins people are being exposed to in shale oil and gas areas.
Environmental toxins linked to heart defects
"DALLAS, Nov. 17, 2013 — Children’s congenital heart defects may be associated with their mothers’ exposure to specific mixtures of environmental toxins during pregnancy, according to research presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2013."
What they found is mixtures of pollutants made up of organic compounds and metals had a strong correlation to congenital heart defects. In 2006 a chemicals management plan was put in place to bring down the air pollutants and the congenital heart defect rates decreased as the air pollutants decreased. Women who are pregnant should avoid living in heavily polluted areas.
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Just five years since its inception, does the strategic plan for the Australian National Broadband Network need significant revision, and if so, what sort of revision? Already, there is discussion about where to use fiber to the home and where to use fiber to the neighborhood.
But are other changes, relying more on mobile access, also needed? A position paper created by the McKell Institute, and funded by Vodafone Australia, raises even more questions.
The McKell Institute paper makes the case that the Australian National Broadband Network, intended to build a new fiber access infrastructure for Australia, also can be used to support enhanced mobile Internet access, using fiber backhaul to support new arrays of small cells, and should do so, according to study author Michael Gordon-Smith.
The position paper, funded by Vodafone Australia, argues that It argues that small mobile base stations, able to be placed on lampposts, and using the NBN for backhaul, could significantly increase and improve mobile coverage in both urban and regional Australia.
The implications are unclear. If Vodafone Australia wishes to secure backhaul from the NBN, it is allowed to do so. The McKell position paper argues only that the NBN should be recrafted to add support for backhaul to small cell sites.
In and of itself, that is not so surprising. The minimalist change is that some potential small cell sites, such as lamp posts, could become terminating access locations.
But there also is another potential complication, namely the possibility that mobile Internet access, supported by such a network, could emerge as a stronger competitor to the planned fixed line access network.
And that eventuality could emerge based on the extent of the backhaul network for small cells. What if, instead of a “thin” deployment, small cell backhaul connections were widely deployed?
“Changes in the environment are sufficiently large that policymakers and NBN Co should consider whether strategic decisions made five years ago need any modification,” said Gordon-Smith.
The key word is “strategic,” not merely “tactical.” And one might argue that allowing a mobile service provider to buy backhaul at urban backhaul locations is fairly tactical, requiring only that the NBN be willing to install drops for a paying customer.
It is subtle, but that very statement suggests mobile Internet access could become a more-important part of the access infrastructure enabled by the NBN. The reason is simple: mobile carriers always would have had the ability to buy services from NBN, to deploy in support of small cell networks, if they chose to do so.
The position paper, in suggesting markets and end user demand have shifted in the direction of mobile, invites further shifts in NBN architecture that seemingly have implications beyond allowing mobile service providers to become customers of the backhaul network.
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Back in April, Israel’s Elbit Systems won a $40 million contract to supply Nigeria with the Wise Intelligence Technology (WiT[TM]) System, a cyber intelligence analysis and tracker.
The system collects data from multiple sources, databases and sensors, processes it and sends it to intelligence personnel for action. Set to be installed in Abuja , Nigeria, the operation is against Chapter four, section 37 of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria and will be like the US’s infamous Prism project that has caused a public outcry in the country and globally.
Media reports are claiming Elbit Systems, are already in the country to start the two year project set in Abuja, that will help the Nigeria government spy on its citizens online activities, even against the suspension of the project by the National Assembly. The report also claim there are about 20 Nigerian intelligence officers receiving training in Israel on how to use the technology.
The WiT technology will be integrated with various data sources, including Elbit Systems’ Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) solution and Elbit Systems’ PC Surveillance Systems (PSS), an advance solution for covert intelligence gathering. Click headline to read more--
A judge’s decision this week to block the state’s access to billions of dollars in bonds it needs to build a bullet train also threatens the only other pot of money California has to finance the project — $3.3 billion from Uncle Sam.
Just a few days ago, the state’s High-Speed Rail Authority believed it had $8.6 billion in state bond proceeds and $3.3 billion in federal money to begin construction this spring on the rail line’s first stretch of track in the Central Valley.
But now the authority’s ability to spend any of those crucial funds to push the controversial bullet train project forward is highly uncertain.
“The rulings raise so many questions about whether this project still makes financial sense,” said Joe Nation, a public finance professor at Stanford University who called it a “moment of truth” for California. “This could turn into a real nightmare,” he added.
Even before Monday’s stunning rulings by Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny, the project had been mocked as a “train to nowhere” because the state had only enough funding to build about 120 miles of track, from the Fresno-Madera area to the northern outskirts of Bakersfield.
The $8.6 billion in voter-approved state bonds and the $3.3 billion in federal funds represent less than one-fifth of the money needed for the $68.4 billion project. But because of Monday’s rulings and the possibility that federal funding could be pulled back, the money “in hand” could ultimately become pocket change.
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Faster broadband is one of the policies for the future of Yapton on show this weekend.
Residents will have the chance to have their say about possible housing sites at the drop-in day on Saturday (November 30).
It is being held from midday-6pm at Yapton Village Hall to enable villagers to see the draft neighbourhood plan.
MP Nick Gibb will be attending the event at the opening.
The plan has been produced by a group of residents to guide the area through the challenges of the next 15 years.
Deborah Robinson, the group’s chairman, said: “We are delighted to be able to present the first draft of our neighbourhood plan to the village.
“Community engagement has been a fundamental part of the process. “All of our previous consultation has been poured into this document. We hope as many villagers as possible will come along to tell us what they think.
“Our neighbourhood plan is being put together by local people for local people. So, have your say on how we shape the final version of it.”
The plan can also be viewed on the group’s website at www.ynp.org.uk
It proposes several sites for small-scale development, the preservation of the village boundaries and the establishment of better broadband internet connections.
They are among the proposals which establish a vision for the evolution and long-term sustainability of the village for the next ten to 15 years.
Once the draft version is finalised, people living and working in the village will be invited to go to the polls and vote on its contents in a referendum.
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Japan's coal consumption jumped 26% in October, compared to the same month last year. As the world's largest importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG), this could have implications for the sector.
According to Reuters, the country's 10 main utilities consumed nearly 16% more coal in the first 10 months of the year compared with the same period last year. Two new power stations are expected to start producing next month, adding 3.7 million tonnes per year to demand.
Japan is the world's second-largest coal importer and the third-largest oil consumer. A major surge in the country's coal consumption could raise global prices which are down nearly 9% for the year.
After the Fukushima meltdown, Japan began shutting nuclear reactors and had to make a sudden switch to oil to meet energy demands.
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Japan's oldest automaker, Daihatsu, raised some eyebrows a couple of years ago when it unveiled its FC ShoCase vehicle. Along with being funny-looking, it was powered by a prototype fuel cell (first announced in 2007) that was said to overcome some of the key limitations of traditional hydrogen fuel cells. At this year's Tokyo Motor Show, a new FC concept vehicle has been presented – the FC Deco Deck mini-truck.
A detailed description of the fuel cell can be found in our previous article on the ShoCase, but here's an overview of what makes it special.
In a conventional fuel cell, platinum must be used as the electrode catalyst, as its excellent corrosion-resistance keeps it from being eaten away by the cell's acidic polymer electrolyte membrane. Daihatsu's cell, by contrast, utilizes a much more innocuous alkaline anion exchange membrane. This means that expensive platinum isn't required for the electrode catalyst, which can instead be made from cheaper metals such as nickel or cobalt.
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Top secret documents retrieved by U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden show that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government allowed the largest American spy agency to conduct widespread surveillance in Canada during the 2010 G8 and G20 summits.
The documents are being reported exclusively by CBC News.
The briefing notes, stamped "Top Secret," show the U.S. turned its Ottawa embassy into a security command post during a six-day spying operation by the National Security Agency while U.S. President Barack Obama and 25 other foreign heads of government were on Canadian soil in June of 2010.
The covert U.S. operation was no secret to Canadian authorities.
An NSA briefing note describes the American agency's operational plans at the Toronto summit meeting and notes they were "closely co-ordinated with the Canadian partner."
The NSA and its Canadian "partner," the Communications Security Establishment Canada, gather foreign intelligence for their respective governments by covertly intercepting phone calls and hacking into computer systems around the world.
The secret documents do not reveal the precise targets of so much espionage by the NSA — and possibly its Canadian partner — during the Toronto summit.
But both the U.S. and Canadian intelligence agencies have been implicated with their British counterpart in hacking the phone calls and emails of foreign politicians and diplomats attending the G20 summit in London in 2009 — a scant few months before the Toronto gathering of the same world leaders.
Notably, the secret NSA briefing document describes part of the U.S. eavesdropping agency's mandate at the Toronto summit as "providing support to policymakers."
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Over the weekend, NRC Handelsblad, a Dutch newspaper, reported that the NSA has infected more than 50,000 networks with malware globally. This report was followed by one in the New York Times, detailing the lengths the NSA is willing to go to in order to obtain more power.
On Saturday, the NRC published a heavily redacted slide, taken from information released by Edward Snowden, that shows the scope of the NSA's Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) efforts. According to slide, more than 50,000 networks worldwide are infected with the agency's malware. However, given that the slide dates to 2012, it's possible that the numbers are actually higher.
Additional proof that the data in the slide is legitimate, the NRC said, comes from the reports earlier this summer when Belgacom announced that the GCHQ (the British partner of the NSA) has infected their network and installed malware. The GCHQ was able to do this by infecting the systems used by employees as they visited a fake LinkedIn page.
According to the NRC report, supporting claims from the Washington Post as well as reports from Foreign Policy, the NSA's malware campaign was assigned to TAO (Tailored Access Operations), a department within the agency that employs more than 1,000 hackers. According to the Washington Post, CNE-operations such as the ones recently confirmed have been going on since 1998.
The NSA declined to comment on the NRC's story, or questions related to the redacted slide. Experts who have speculated on the story say that based on the numbers and the data within the slide, it appears that the NSA is targeting Telcos, banks, and ISPs.
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Three years ago, the city of Grand Rapids, MI created its first half-mile bike lane on a public street.
Since then, another 34.5 miles have been designated for bicyclists, with much of that mileage running through the busy urban core.
So it wasn’t a surprise when the League of American Bicyclists named the city a Bronze Bicycle Friendly Community recently, giving Grand Rapids its second four-year bronze award.
The city received its first award in 2009 when it announced its intention to become more two-wheeler friendly.
“We are making investments in cycling infrastructure and education that will help all of our neighborhoods thrive and become even more desirable places to invest and raise a family,” Mayor George Heartwell said.
The Greater Grand Rapids Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Tom Tilma presented Heartwell with the LAB Bronze plaque this month and told city officials that his group has a different color in mind.
“The league has awarded the city a bronze award. It’s a high-standing bronze, but we’re hoping for silver the next time,” Tilma said.
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A Menmuir resident has hit out at BT as the area faced a second incident of no internet or telephone connection following a tree severing telegraph cables.
Callum Dunleavy contacted the Brechin Advertiser after a second tree cut connection to the community just three weeks after BT repaired another broken cable.
However, Callum said it took a four-week battle with the company and the help of Angus MP Mike Weir to get the initial problem fixed.
The issue is one that has affected Menmuir before. Callum revealed: “For the last five years, every winter our landline phone and internet has come down due to the wind as trees across the road have fallen onto the telegraph lines severing them.
“This year, about seven weeks ago, winds blew a tree over severing a telegraph pole which supplies us our internet and phone connections.
“Over the course of four weeks since the line was severed we made lots of frustrating contact with BT care on Twitter and BT Openreach via internet on my mobile ‘phone, which I can only access a mile along the road from my house up a hill.
“During this time they frequently gave us dates of when an engineer would come out to inspect the fault.”
However, no engineer appeared. He continued: “They said that engineers were currently out fixing the fault, but when looking outside I could see that no engineers were out working at all.”
Eventually another date was issued for the repair, and Callum was told the engineer would be out to the area in two weeks times. Callum commented: “This would mean that our landline and internet would have been down and unusable by us for a total of six weeks.”
Unable to wait any longer, Callum sought help from his local MP, Mike Weir. He explained: “After having waited four weeks already, we were fed up by now and since this was the fifth year in a row when this has happened in which we’ve had to wait a month, we took action and contacted our MP, Mike Weir.
“Three days after contacting him engineers came out and removed the tree and re-attached the cable in three hours. We had waited four weeks for them to send engineers and the job itself only took three hours.
“To add to injury, friends living just outside Forfar lost connection but since they lived on the outskirts of town, they had their fault fixed overnight and restored by the next day. BT’s treatment of rural people compared to town dwellers is awful and frankly unacceptable.”
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Genetically modified foods such as soy and corn may be responsible for a number of gluten-related maladies including intestinal disorders now plaguing 18 million Americans, according to a new report released on Tuesday.
The report was released by the Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT), and cites authoritative data from the US Department of Agriculture, US Environmental Protection Agency records, medical journal reviews as well as international research.
“Gluten sensitivity can range in severity from mild discomfort, such as gas and bloating, to celiac disease, a serious autoimmune condition that can, if undiagnosed, result in a 4-fold increase in death,” said Jeffrey M. Smith, executive director of IRT in a statement released on their website.
Smith cited how a “possible environmental trigger may be the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to the American food supply, which occurred in the mid-1990s,” describing the nine GM crops currently on the market.
In soy, corn, cotton (oil), canola (oil), sugar from sugar beets, zucchini, yellow squash, Hawaiian papaya, and alfalfa, “Bt-toxin, glyphosate, and other components of GMOs, are linked to five conditions that may either initiate or exacerbate gluten-related disorders,” according to Smith.
It’s the BT-toxin in genetically modified foods which kills insects by “puncturing holes in their cells.” The toxin is present in ‘every kernel’ of Bt-corn and survives human digestion, with a 2012 study confirming that it punctures holes in human cells as well.
The GMO-related damage was linked to five different areas: Intestinal permeability, imbalanced gut bacteria, immune activation and allergic response, impaired digestion, and damage to the intestinal wall.
The IRT release also indicated that glyphosate, a weed killer sold under the brand name ‘Roundup’ was also found to have a negative effect on intestinal bacteria. GMO crops contain high levels of the toxin at harvest.
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Dipping your toes in the waters around Britain has grown marginally less inviting: in the last few years the seas have grown slightly colder.
Against the background of a continued warming trend, this blip is explained by scientists as an example of the climate’s tendency sometimes to go “off trend”, and to show clear variations from the norm.
UK researchers say the average UK coastal sea surface temperature in the last decade was lower in 2008-2012 than in 2003-2007, an example of short-term variability which they say is at odds with temperature records which “continue to show an overall upward trend“.
The finding – perhaps not surprising, given the slower pace of atmospheric warming in recent years – is reported by the Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP) and is published in its latest Report Card, which assesses how climate change is affecting UK waters.
MCCIP, launched in 2005, is a partnership between scientists, the UK Government and its agencies, non-governmental organisations and industry.
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The people of the country need to make an extra effort to surmount the contemporary moral challenges, President Pranab Mukherjee today said, stressing the need to focus on education for India to be "truly developed".
"Educational institutions have a pivotal role to inculcate in our youth the core civilizational values of love for motherland, performance of duty, compassion for all, tolerance for pluralism, respect for women, honesty in life, self-restraint in conduct, responsibility in action and discipline," the President said at the 12th convocation ceremony of Rajiv Gandhi University here. Asserting that education is the bedrock of an enlightened society, he said a good education breeds tolerance for divergent views.
"Our country has done well in terms of economic development. Yet, we cannot claim to have evolved into a truly developed society," he said.
"Development is not only about factories, dams and roads. Development, to my mind, is about people, their values and their devotion to spiritual and cultural heritage of our nation."
"At a time when we, as a nation, have to make an extra effort to surmount the contemporary moral challenges, it is holistic education that must play a definitive role in shaping our values," Mukherjee said.
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What do the torrential rains that swept across a swathe of East Africa in 1997 have in common with the record-breaking drought that Australia has just emerged from? Both can be blamed on El Niño's Indian Ocean sibling.
A study looking at how climate change will affect this ocean oscillation pattern has predicted that if the world is allowed to warm uncontrollably, these kinds of extreme events will become the norm by 2050.
The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) is an oscillation of warm water across the equator. In the oscillation's positive phase, sea surface temperatures in the Arabian Sea rise whereas temperatures around Sumatra, Indonesia, fall. In the negative phase, it's the other way around.
As well as being blamed for Australia's recent dry spell and the 1997 East African storms, the IOD's positive phase has been linked to droughts in Australia and dry weather in Indonesia over the last 6500 years, according to a 2007 study of fossilised coral. The study also concluded that positive events are becoming more frequent, with an unprecedented 11 occurrences over the past 30 years.
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US and British researchers may have identified the fingerprint of global warming in one of the darkest, coldest, most mysterious places on the planet. Four thousand metres below the sea surface, at the bottom of the north-east Pacific abyss, they have found changes in the food supply to some of the planet’s least known creatures. And these changes track changes to temperatures at the surface.
Kenneth Smith of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and colleagues from the University of Southampton in the UK, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on a 24-year exploration of one of life’s deepest puzzles.
The research is important because it provides yet another indicator of the carbon cycle at work; it is important because it provides another level of understanding of the climate system; and because it provides yet another way to check on global warming.
The last aspect is probably the least significant, if only because the period of observation is so brief, the study is confined to only one site, and the conditions for observation so difficult. But it offers a neat demonstration of how science is done.
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“The Government must provide an absolute and full release of the Ernst & Young Chorus report without any sanitisation of the findings,” says Labour’s Associate ICT spokesperson Clare Curran.
“And it has to be the whole financial truth and nothing but the truth.
“Amy Adams must be open with the people of New Zealand over the real state of Chorus’ books. She is under great scrutiny over how she deals with the Chorus crisis and needs to act with the utmost transparency and integrity.
“Yesterday’s announcement that all political parties represented in Parliament, other than National, will not back any legislation that would overrule the Commerce Commission’s decision, means the Government is out in the cold and Amy Adams will have to reassess her options.
“The country needs ultrafast broadband and Labour remains committed to faster, cheaper broadband in a pro-competitive market framework. But it must be remembered that this is entirely a mess of the Government’s own making.
“The best solution for businesses and consumers is for the Government to enforce the contract that Chorus willingly signed up to.
“Anything less would be crony capitalism,” says Clare Curran.
Benjamin Kay is a school teacher from Santa Monica: this week he released a video documenting the disgusting waste – mostly plastic pollution – that flowed into Santa Monica Bay from the “second flush” at the start of California’s rainy season. Benjamin’s goal is to raise the awareness of his students and engage them in protecting the community’s threatened beaches and waters.
Most of California is a very dry state, so when it finally starts to rain the pollution built up over the dry months – whether plastic bags, bottles, or toxins -- washes from inland streets to storm drains and rivers, then out to the ocean. The first rain of the season in early November was fairly light, so the massive flow of waste didn’t make its way to the ocean until this week’s major downpour. Now, imagine this scene replaying across the state and all around the world, and you’ll understand why globally, oceans are overwhelmed with plastic waste.
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The parliamentary committee which monitors the security services should be given greater powers to obtain evidence and summon officials, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, has urged.
The intelligence and security committee (ISC), which oversees the work of MI5, MI6 and the monitoring agency GCHQ, should be chaired by a politician from an opposition party and provided with an independent secretariat and legal advice, the Liberal Democrat peer added. The current chair is Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the Conservative former foreign secretary.
In a speech entitled "Secrecy in Justice – Can it Ever be Fair?", Macdonald said more effective parliamentary oversight of intelligence gathering was vital in the wake of revelations about mass surveillance by GCHQ and the expansion of "closed material proceedings" (CMPs) , known as "secret courts".
Macdonald warned that the Justice and Security Act, which introduced both secret hearings into civil courts and partially reformed the ISC, "has, unwittingly or not, actually weakened democratic oversight of the security and intelligence agencies".
He said it had allowed "the introduction of closed hearings into our civil justice system in national security cases, while simultaneously failing to strengthen the structures of direct parliamentary oversight in any meaningful way".
The peer warned that the way the government handled rendition cases, like that of Binyam Mohamed, and programmes like Tempora – the clandestine electronic surveillance programme revealed by leaks from the former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden – signalled the need for enhanced public scrutiny.
"The risk they portend is simply a further weakening in democratic and parliamentary oversight – less pressure to behave," the former DPP said. "And this risk will grow unless the courts are vigilant to ensure that secrecy in justice is never be allowed to become a damaging alternative to integrity in these most sensitive areas of our public life.
He warned that the intelligence agencies have the power to "procure legislation" to dominate decision making in their sphere of influence and "even seek to lock its antagonists out of judicial processes".
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Rain gauges are generally pretty accurate at measuring the amount of precipitation that has fallen at their location, but they can't be everywhere. This means that average rainfall figures for a region could be inaccurate, if considerably more or less rain has been falling in unmonitored areas. Cars, however, are just about everywhere that there are roads. With that in mind, researchers from Germany's University of Hanover are looking at using them to tell us how much water is coming from the sky.
When you're driving and it starts raining, what's the first thing that you do? That's right, you turn on the windshield wipers. The harder it rains, the faster the setting that you select. Scientists with U Hanover's RainCars project postulated that if select cars where outfitted with GPS and wiper speed-monitoring sensors, they could provide real-time data on how much rain was falling in a wide number of locations.
In order to test their theory, they set up an experiment in which a stationary car was placed under a sprinkler system, with a person inside the car. As water flowed from the sprinkler, at known output rates, the person turned up the speed of the wipers in order to maintain their view through the windshield. It turned out that there was a fairly consistent correlation between the speed of the wipers, and the amount of water coming from the sprinkler – in other words, the flow rate of the sprinkler could be roughly determined by measuring wiper speed.
One problem with this approach, however, is that not all drivers are equally fussy about how moisture-free they like their windshield. Therefore, the RainCars team believe that their system would work better on cars with optical sensors that automatically adjust the speed of the wipers – an increasing number of which are already on the roads.
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Argentina's embassy in London said new laws had been passed by the country's congress to clamp down on exploration it claims is in breach of UN decisions.
The UK's Foreign Office insisted the activities were legitimately controlled by the islands' government.
Islanders recently voted overwhelmingly to remain a British overseas territory.
The embassy said legislation "provides for prison sentences for the duration of up to 15 years; fines equivalent to the value of 1.5 million barrels of oil; the banning of individuals and companies from operating in Argentina; and the confiscation of equipment and any hydrocarbons that would have been illegally extracted"
It said in a statement: "The Argentine government has protested against and rejected all of the United Kingdom's attempts to promote and authorize such hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation activities in the area of the Argentine continental shelf.
"These attempts are manifestly contrary to Resolution 31/49 of the United Nations General Assembly, which requires the UK and Argentina to refrain from taking decisions that would imply introducing unilateral modifications into the situation of the Malvinas Islands while the sovereignty dispute between the two countries is still pending."
In a referendum in March, Falkland Islanders decided by 1,513 votes to three to remain a UK overseas territory but Argentina - which calls the islands the Malvinas - has stepped up its claims to them at the United Nations.
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