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<title>Haaze.com / belibim3 / All</title>
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<pubDate>Fri, 15 Apr 2011 07:11:29 +0000</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[What does 'safe' mean in a nuclear disaster (Q&A)]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=what-does-safe-mean-in-a-nuclear-disaster-qa</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=what-does-safe-mean-in-a-nuclear-disaster-qa</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 15 Apr 2011 07:11:29 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>belibim3</dc:creator>
<category>Eco</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=what-does-safe-mean-in-a-nuclear-disaster-qa</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Ira Helfand, board member and past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility.(Credit:Physicians for Social Responsibility)The news out of Japan has not been good this week. Officials there raised the severity rating of the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to the highest level, while the plant continues to dump radiation into the air and water and radiation is found in milk and drinking water in U.S. cities and elsewhere. What does this mean for you and me  To help make sense of the health and environmental consequences of this crisis, CNET spoke to two experts in the nuclear field. My colleague Martin LaMonica spoke with David Brenner from Columbia University's Center for Radiological Research. Brenner says that while the individual risks are currently low for people outside the area around the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, radioactive particles have entered the food chain and will be there for generations, which will likely cause at least some cases of cancer. That Q&amp;A can be found here.Ira Helfand, board member and former president of the medical and public health group Physicians for Social Responsibility, says there is no &quot;safe&quot; level of radiation and that while levels reaching the U.S. now are relatively low, they could get much worse if things deteriorate at the Japanese plant. But for now, he advises caution, not panic.What health risks for people in the United States does the nuclear crisis in Japan pose I think the health risk right now in the U.S. is relatively low. There is no safe dose of radiation, so any exposure is not good for you and does increase your chance of getting cancer. The concern is how much radiation is ultimately going to come out of this plant. At the moment, the amount is said to be about 10 percent of the amount released at Chernobyl. The amount that is potentially releasable there is much, much larger than Chernobyl, and the situation remains completely out of control at this point. There's still a substantial risk that there will be large amounts of radiation from Fukushima, and in that case we could see a significant exposure here in the United States. Following Chernobyl, people in large numbers developed cancers as a result of their exposure to that radiation, and that is the potential risk here, although we're not at that point yet. There are indications that Fukushima has more than 20 times the amount of nuclear fuel than Chernobyl had. Does this mean that the potential threat from Fukushima could exceed that of Chernobyl Absolutely there is much more radioactive material in play here. There are some important differences. There was a huge fire at Chernobyl and it was hard to disperse the radioactivity, and there has not been that kind of fire so far at Fukushima. But there's an enormous amount of radioactive material there, which is not under control at this point and which could enter the environment and potentially travel large distances. Did comparable levels of air, water, and milk contamination show up in the United States after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 I don't know the exact levels that showed up in the United States after Chernobyl. There certainly was contamination and large contaminations across a big swath of Europe. The issue for us with Fukushima is that the predominant winds tend to blow from west to east so that, although there has been some radiation blowing towards mainlands Japan and Korea, there is a real possibility that if there is a large release that it would blow the other direction toward the United States.What's the difference between the radiation that plant workers are exposed to and air-borne radioactivity For the most part workers are being exposed to a very intense Gamma Field. They're wearing protective suits and filters so the radioactive particles aren't getting into their lungs and on their skin. They're still getting gamma rays, which are like X-rays, they pass right through those radiation suits. So they're getting a one-time radiation dose and they're at risk of radiation sickness and at risk of cancer down the road. The airborne particles pose a slightly different problem. They get into food and water and get inhaled by people as well. They then become what are called &quot;internal emitters&quot; and get incorporated into our tissues and continue to irradiate us on an ongoing basis for, in some cases, decades of time. In that way they deliver a much higher dose of radiation over time.You've said hundreds of thousands of cancer cases that occurred in the former Soviet Union because of the Chernobyl catastrophe were due to people eating radioactively contaminated food. Is that the biggest risk to people outside Japan Probably. It depends how much radiation is released. But probably the main way this would get into our systems is if we eat contaminated food. And that could be food imported from Japan or grown here in the U.S. if there is a large amount of radioactive material here. There's an area in the United Kingdom where people are still not allowed to raise sheep for consumption because of intensely radioactive contamination there from Chernobyl 25 years ago.How far do radioactive particles travel It's basically a worldwide distribution. Radioactive material from Fukushima is probably detected at any place on the planet at this point. Obviously, the closer you are, the more downwind you are, the greater exposure you are going to see. When you release this much radioactivity it ultimately disperses everywhere. Do you think that the levels of iodine 131 and cesium 137 showing up in air, water, and milk in the U.S. are safe U.S. officials say they are at low levels and that we shouldn't be worried. The word &quot;safe&quot; is kind of charged here. I would say that there is no safe exposure to radiation and the Bier VII report (PDF) from the National Academies agrees with that. Any dose of radiation you are exposed to increases your risk of getting cancer. Having said that, the doses we are seeing right now are extremely low. The increased risk of cancer an individual person gets from drinking that water is extremely low. On the other hand, if very large numbers of people are exposed to a very low risk, some of those people are going to get cancer and they are going to die from it. That's the problem with using a word like &quot;safe.&quot; What you can say is the risk is so low that people should feel that they can drink the water, but it's not the same as saying there is no risk at all. &quot;People get melanoma from solar radiation. They get lung cancer from breathing radon particles, particularly in areas of construction done with granite. And a certain amount of natural instance of cancer is caused by natural background radiation. The point is, the fact that we already have radiation in the environment isn't reason to expose people to more of it.&quot;Would you consider the low or moderate levels of cesium-137 contamination that we are all now experiencing worth the risk They're not safe. The added risk of cancer is very low for any one individual, but that's not the same as saying people aren't going to get cancer from this because large numbers of people are potentially going to get exposed to it. Unlike iodine, which has a half life of eight days (every eight days the radiation is halved), cesium's half life is 30 years, so this is a long-lived contaminant and long-lived threat to the people exposed to it. They are reporting cesium in milk in the U.S. and how low the dose is I don't know at this point. I'm not sure we do know what the doses are. One of the things that was very troubling for those of us who gave the Japanese the benefit of the doubt was to discover that they knew for several weeks that this accident was much worse than they were letting on. There are real concerns about the quality of the data we are getting. This certainly was a huge issue after Chenobyl.But there are suggestions by government officials and others that low levels of radiation cause no health problems. There is no safe level of radiation. It's wrong to say that they are safe. What you can say is the risk is extremely low, so low that for any one individual it is reasonable to continue to drink the water or milk. But if enough people drink it some of them are going to get cancer. Is it reasonable for any one person to assume that risk People have to decide how much risk they are willing to live with. When you get into acar and drive to work there a certain risk that you are going to have an accident. Some people aren't willing to drive to work, or fly in airplanes. There are a lot of things we have to do that have some risk associated with it. The key point for me is even if the risk is one that an individual might be willing to assume, it's not necessarily a risk that society should assume. Even if we don't need to take individual action to protect our health, we shouldn't be letting this happen in the first place.The U.S. FDA has stopped food imports from Japan. Is this likely to be temporary How is this sort of thing determined It's not clear how long this will be a problem. It depends on how much radiation continues to come out of the plant. If the radiation stops, most of it has been iodine 131, and that will decay quickly. But if it continues to leak iodine 131 or we get a bigger leak of cesium 137, this could be longer term problem.What about the radiation risk to seafood, and seaweed, which is commonly used in sushi Would you consider them safe to consume Not necessarily. It depends on where they are gathered from. They're dumping an enormous amount of radioactivity into the ocean right now. They're going to have to monitor the fish and the seaweed very closely to see if they've incorporated significant amounts of this radioactive material. The problem is that the fish move around, so fish that have swum through that area could get caught somewhere else. We're going to have to be careful. Should the government be testing seafood from any international waters at this point They probably do need to do some surveillance testing, at least. Tuna migrates and some ends up off the coast of the U.S. and Canada. We'll have to make sure this stuff isn't carrying high levels of radioactivity, particularly cesium.What else should the U.S. government do I think the main thing they need to do is to review policy around our own nuclear power plants. It's very disturbing that the reaction of the U.S. government from Obama on down is this knee-jerk reaffirmation of our continued intention to use nuclear power. In the face of this accident a little bit of examination would seem to be appropriate. The U.S. government just said that people shouldn't be within 50 miles of the Fukushima plant. If you draw 50-mile circles around all the power plants in the United States there are 110 million people who live within those circles. There are individual power plants whose evacuation zone would be 17 million people. That's in New York. It is very wrong to just say we are going to go full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes, when we have this number of people in harm's way. What should people in Japan do to protect themselves And how about people in the U.S. Here in U.S. at the moment we don't need to take any specific measures to protect ourselves, except monitor the situation closely so if there are significant further releases we are prepared to act then. In Japan there are people who should and probably are taking potassium iodide to protect themselves in the event of iodine 131 exposures. They have be very careful about their food supply. The produce grown in Fukushima won't be safe for human consumption. Will they ever be able to grow food there again If there is a lot of cesium in the soil, it's going to be a very long time before they grow anything safely there. There are areas around Chernobyl where people still aren't supposed to be growing food.There is a perception that low radiation levels are just more incremental noise in an environment already filled with background contamination from cosmic rays, radon gas, and X-rays. Do people die from that contamination we get on a daily basis Why is this different People do die from that. One of the things that causes cancer in the world is radiation. People get melanoma from solar radiation. They get lung cancer from breathing radon particles, particularly in areas of construction done with granite. And a certain amount of natural instance of cancer is caused by natural background radiation. The point is, the fact that we already have radiation in the environment isn't reason to expose people to more of it and cause more of that effect. Anything else that you would like to add I would like to point out the role that nuclear power plays in the proliferation of nuclear weapons. We've got this weird situation where we identify the proliferation of nuclear weapons as the No. 1 security threat to the United States. At the same time it is our formal government policy to promote the export of nuclear power to countries all around the world. Any country that has a nuclear power industry can build nuclear weapons, and we just can't have it both ways. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Internet Explorer 9 arrives, but not for XP]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=internet-explorer-9-arrives-but-not-for-xp</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=internet-explorer-9-arrives-but-not-for-xp</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 14 Mar 2011 07:10:01 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>belibim3</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=internet-explorer-9-arrives-but-not-for-xp</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The training wheels have come off of the latest version of Internet Explorer, as Microsoft unleashes version 9 of the world's most heavily used browser this evening at an event at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSW) in Austin, Texas. Internet Explorer 9 (download after 9 p.m. PT) debuts to the public not only as the fastest, most standards-compliant version of IE yet, but also as one that can stand up and compete on features and looks with MozillaFirefox, Google Chrome, AppleSafari, and the Opera browser. Along with IE's new features, though, Microsoft has a clear message for Windows XP users: hurry up and upgrade toWindows 7 already.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[DOE designs energy-saving AC units]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=doe-designs-energy-saving-ac-units</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=doe-designs-energy-saving-ac-units</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 09 Feb 2011 08:10:41 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>belibim3</dc:creator>
<category>Eco</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=doe-designs-energy-saving-ac-units</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Prototype of high-efficiency rooftop air conditioning unit designed at DOE national laboratories in conjunction with the Commercial Building Energy Alliances.(Credit:U.S. Department of Energy)The U.S. government has released specifications for a highly-efficient rooftop air conditioning unit it believes could save the country a plethora of electricity, and commercial properties a considerable amount of money.The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) had announced its laboratories were working on such a rooftop air conditioning (RTU) in fall 2010. However, it became clear on Tuesday that the project was successful when the DOE announced it would be holding a Webinar on building high-efficiency RTUs to interested manufacturers on February 23 via its list of upcoming forums posted on the Building Technologies Program Web site.&quot;High-efficiency rooftop units, when built according to the criteria of the new specifications, are expected to reduce energy use by as much as 50 to 60 percent compared to the current ASHRAE 90.1-2010 standard, depending on location and facility type,&quot; the DOE said in a statement.In the meantime, the DOE has released a summary (PDF) and fact sheet (PDF) roughly outlining the specifications for the ten-ton capacity air conditioning unit.Manufacturers of RTUs might want to take notice as the DOE has all but lined up buyers for manufacturers willing to build these types of units. The design was developed in conjunction with the Commercial Building Energy Alliances (CBEAs), a group of U.S. companies with vast commercial real estate holdings that includes Target, Walmart, and Macy's.&quot;CBEA members are eager to start purchasing these units and are encouraging manufacturers to develop products to these specifications,&quot; the DOE said in a statement.&quot;To help achieve the best-in-class rooftop units requested by industry partners, DOE national laboratories, including Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Lab, will provide technical assistance to manufacturers or developers who want to build the more efficient units. Interested manufacturers will receive assistance in designing, constructing, measuring, and testing the new air conditioner units produced to this specification,&quot; said the DOE.In conjunction with the release, the DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has also launched a free online cost calculator. The Unitary Air Conditioner (UAC) estimator allows a company to compare different high-efficiency or standard commercial air conditioning units based on more than a dozen different specs for a given unit and its location.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Reddit surges to 1 billion monthly page views]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=reddit-surges-to-1-billion-monthly-page-views</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=reddit-surges-to-1-billion-monthly-page-views</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 03 Feb 2011 08:10:20 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>belibim3</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=reddit-surges-to-1-billion-monthly-page-views</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Reddit has joined an exclusive club on the Internet.The Conde Nast-owned social news site announced yesterday that, for the first time, its monthly traffic exceeded 1 billion page views in January, according to statistics from Google Analytics that Reddit offered in a blog post. It is now among the 100 sites on the Web with that much traffic, according to Reddit.&quot;This is an accomplishment that all redditors should take pride in, because people wouldn't keep arriving in droves--and coming back--if not for the community that you've created here,&quot; Reddit spokesman Mike Schiraldi said yesterday in the blog post.The company also reported more than 13,750,000 unique visitors last month.Reddit's growth has been nothing short of astounding over the past year. In January 2010, Reddit had about 250 million page views. Back in July, Reddit announced that it had over 429 million page views between June 14 and July 14. In December 2010, its monthly page views rose to 829 million.Meanwhile, Digg, formerly the leader in social news, has watched its traffic plummet.In the summer, Digg unveiled site revision V4, a launch that many in the community believed gave more power to publishers and took it from Digg's own users. In response, the Digg community lashed out and started pushing Reddit stories to the site's home page.They also left.Hitwise reported in late Septemer that Digg traffic was down 26 percent in the U.S. and 34 percent in the U.K. in just four weeks. At peak, Hitwise said, Digg had 40 million unique visitors. In an interview posted yesterday on Digg, company CEO Matt Williams revealed that the site now has less than 20 million unique visitors.That figure is nothing to scoff at. But a quick glance at Digg's home page reveals the community isn't as active as it once was. As of this writing, just two &quot;Top News&quot; items on the Digg home page had more than 200 Diggs. A year ago, some stories needed that many Diggs just to make it to the home page.Reddit's home page, on the other hand, has several stories with over 2,000 points.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[With Honeycomb, Google has a shot at catching Apple in tablets]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=with-honeycomb-google-has-a-shot-at-catching-apple-in-tablets</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=with-honeycomb-google-has-a-shot-at-catching-apple-in-tablets</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>belibim3</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=with-honeycomb-google-has-a-shot-at-catching-apple-in-tablets</guid>
<description><![CDATA[For the first time, Google has a chance at catching up with Apple in the hot tablet computer market. That&amp;'s one of the core points I took away from Google&amp;'s press event yesterday where it showed off Honeycomb, the next version of its Android software, specifically aimed at tablets. The ball is now in Apple&amp;'s court.If Google can launch its Android 3.0 software without a hitch, then the path will be clear for a bunch of new Android tablets to challenge the Apple iPad. While Apple stands poised to launch its iPad 2 tablet in April, the likelihood is that Apple won&amp;'t enjoy as big a lead in 2010. The wild card is 4G service, the speedy wireless broadband links that will dramatically improve the speed of web surfing on tablets.Last year, Apple crushed all of the competition, selling 14.8 million iPads and taking anywhere from 75 to 95 percent of the market. But Android tablets didn&amp;'t really show up until the fourth quarter, when the Samsung Galaxy Tab launched and shipped 2 million units into stores. (The actual sold-to-customers number is in dispute).Apple had all the advantages, with unique content and lots of apps. It had a superior product, a good user interface that millions of iPod Touch and iPhone users already knew, and the iTunes store that many consumers already knew how to use.But now Google has shown off many of the details of Honeycomb, the tablet-focused release of Android, and it looks good. The Motorola Xoom tablet displayed 18 cool apps running on Honeycomb. And the new user interface has a number of cool features that Apple doesn&amp;'t. You can, for instance, buy an app on the Android Market and it will download over the air to your phone. You don&amp;'t have to wait until you sync your device with a computer.It&amp;'s pretty easy to navigate through the apps, thanks in part to fast graphics performance and the subtle use of 3D in the design. Scrolling through web pages and Google Maps is easy. In short, these features mean that Honeycomb goes a long way toward erasing Apple&amp;'s edge in its user interface and basic navigation.As we noted, cool 3D games can now run on Android tablets. And 3D can be extended beyond games, as with the Google Body app pictured at the right.Right now, there is a shortage of Android apps specifically designed for tablets. Apple has a plethora of beautiful apps, including Flip Board, Epic Games&amp;' Infinity Blade, and News Corp.&amp;'s The Daily newspaper. But developers from Disney to Intuit demonstrated their support for Honeycomb this week. And more developers should come thanks to the addition of in-app purchases, which will make paid apps a reality on the Android Market. Developers such as Ngmoco and Disney cited in-app purchases (the ability to buy virtual goods or apps from within a running  application) as a critical game-changer for the Android market, which  has mostly monetized apps through advertising to date. Before the  arrival of in-app purchases, the Android Market was completely broken.The developer problem will subside over time. After all, on phones, Android has more than 100,000 apps. While Apple has more than 330,000 iPhone apps, its advantages in terms of exclusive content will likely lessen as Android catches up at a pretty fast clip. Also, the big cross-platform app makers such as Zynga, whose Words With Friends app is pictured at right, are committed to making their apps run across several platforms. The iPhone players will be able to play Words With Friends against Android players. That means developers don&amp;'t want to be locked down to one mobile platform, and clearly they don&amp;'t have to be.Overall, 2010 should be the year of the tablet because of the arrival of fast dual-core processors such as the Nvidia Tegra 2, which powers the Motorola Xoom and the LG G-Slate. Hopefully, a lot more tablet models will show up by the end of the year. If anything, we&amp;'re surprised that so few Honeycomb-based tablets have been announced so far.That leaves the 4G question as a wild card. If the new Android tablets launch ahead of the iPad 2 and get great access to fast broadband speeds of 4G wireless networks, then those tablets will offer something new that Apple doesn&amp;'t. If Apple can offer 4G in a timely way, then it&amp;'s kind of an even battle. But the risk is there that Apple will be stuck on 3G networks while Android tablets take advantage of 4G. That would be a losing proposition for Apple, since 4G is so novel.A lot also depends on what Apple announces. Typically, Apple updates its hardware once a year. That means it will launch its iPad 2 in April and the iPhone 5 in June. It could add some interesting new technologies, such as near-field communications, which will make mobile shopping a much more interesting experience. Apple really has to come up with something great in those new products if it wants to keep an edge.In any case, we can expect the tablet market to even out. It won&amp;'t be lopsided in Apple&amp;'s favor anymore, much like the smartphone market isn&amp;'t owned by the iPhone.It&amp;'s going to be exciting to watch. And we must remember that there are other players out there jockeying for market share, including Research in Motion, Nokia and its Meego software, Palm (now owned by Hewlett-Packard) and Microsoft&amp;'s Windows Phone 7, which is off to a decent start. I&amp;'ve included Google&amp;'s demo of Honeycomb in the video below.Next Story: Foursquare reveals new &amp;''promoted&amp;'' check-in for Super Bowl Sunday Previous Story: Big Data is big &amp;8230' and getting biggerPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: 3D graphics, Android 3.0, games, Honeycomb, iPad, iPad 2, Tegra 2Companies: Apple, Google, HP, Microsoft, nokia, Palm, Research In Motion          Tags: 3D graphics, Android 3.0, games, Honeycomb, iPad, iPad 2, Tegra 2Companies: Apple, Google, HP, Microsoft, nokia, Palm, Research In MotionDean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat. Have news to share Launching a startup Email: tips@venturebeat.comVentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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