Earthquakes linked to plants
producing geothermal power


An analysis of earthquakes in the area around the Salton Sea Geothermal Field in southern California has found a strong correlation between seismic activity and operations for production of geothermal power, which involve pumping water into and out of an underground reservoir.

"We show that the earthquake rate in the Salton Sea tracks a combination of the volume of fluid removed from the ground for power generation and the volume of wastewater injected," said Emily Brodsky, a geophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and lead author of the study, published online in Science.

"The findings show that we might be able to predict the earthquakes generated by human activities. To do this, we need to take a large view of the system and consider both the water coming in and out of the ground," said Ms. Brodsky, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences.

Ms. Brodsky and coauthor Lia Lajoie, who worked on the project as a graduate student, studied earthquake records for the region from 1981 through 2012. They compared earthquake activity with production data for the geothermal power plant, including records of fluid injection and extraction. The power plant is a flash-steam facility which pulls hot water out of the ground, flashes it to steam to run turbines, and recaptures as much water as possible for injection back into the ground. Due to evaporative losses, less water is pumped back in than is pulled out, so the net effect is fluid extraction.

During the period of relatively low-level geothermal operations before 1986, the rate of earthquakes in the region was also low. Seismicity increased as the operations expanded. After 2001, both geothermal operations and seismicity climbed steadily.

The researchers tracked the variation in net extraction over time and compared it to seismic activity. The relationship is complicated because earthquakes are naturally clustered due to local aftershocks, and it can be difficult to separate aftershocks from the direct influence of human activities. The researchers developed a statistical method to separate out the aftershocks, allowing them to measure the background rate of primary earthquakes over time.

"We found a good correlation between seismicity and net extraction," Ms. Brodsky said. "The correlation was even better when we used a combination of all the information we had on fluid injection and net extraction. The seismicity is clearly tracking the changes in fluid volume in the ground."

The vast majority of the induced earthquakes are small, and the same is true of earthquakes in general. The key question is what is the biggest earthquake that could occur in the area, Ms. Brodsky said. The largest earthquake in the region of the Salton Sea Geothermal Field during the 30-year study period was a magnitude 5.1 earthquake.

The nearby San Andreas fault, however, is capable of unleashing extremely destructive earthquakes of at least magnitude 8, Ms. Brodsky said. The location of the geothermal field at the southern end of the San Andreas fault is cause for concern due to the possibility of inducing a damaging earthquake.

"It's hard to draw a direct line from the geothermal field to effects on the San Andreas fault, but it seems plausible that they could interact," Ms. Brodsky said.

At its southern end, the San Andreas fault runs into the Salton Sea, and it's not clear what faults there might be beneath the water. A seismically active region known as the Brawley Seismic Zone extends from the southern end of the San Andreas fault to the northern end of the Imperial fault. The Salton Sea Geothermal Field, located on the southeastern edge of the Salton Sea, is one of four operating geothermal fields in the area.


Judge orders U.S. to terminate
intimate Guantanamo searches


A U.S. federal judge has ordered the government to stop genital searches of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, an act detainees’ lawyers say was aimed to break a hunger strike and discourage their clients from seeking legal counsel.

The decision by U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth Thursday would change the examinations detainees are subject to before and after any phone call or meeting they have with their counsel.

“Specifically, guards shall be limited to grasping the waistband of the detainee’s trousers and shaking the pants to dislodge any contraband,” Lambert wrote in his ruling.

Col. John Bogdan, who oversees the prison, ordered guards to begin the genital searches in May. He told the court his decision was based on an interest in the security of the detention facility.

He said he developed a phased approach in December 2012 to gradually implement the new search procedure following the suicide of detainee Adnan Farhan Abd Latif and the separate discovery of contraband when prisoners in Camp 6 were moved from communal living to single cell housing.

In response, Judge Lamberth said the court found that the new search procedures lack a valid, rational connection to the legitimate government interest, security, put forward to justify them.

Lamberth also asserted that Bogdan’s swiftness in implementing the new searches in May 2013 shows that linking the new searches to the death of Latif and the subsequent investigation was merely an afterthought.”

Defense Department spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale said the Pentagon is reviewing the decision.

“We’re aware of the judge’s ruling and we will continue to follow the law,” he said about an hour after receiving the court’s decision.

The government has not yet stated whether it will make an appeal.

Attorney David Remes, who represents five Guantanamo detainees who are hunger striking to protest their treatment, has described the frisking of detainees' genitals and buttocks as humiliating, especially for devout Muslim men.

He demanded Bogdan’s immediate replacement and called the court's ruling a disaster for the government.

"It's an unmistakable reminder that the court, not the government, is custodian of the legal rights of the detainees," Remes said.
 
Cori Crider of the British human rights group Reprieve said the judge’s decision was fantastic news.

“Those searches were clearly established to stop clients coming out to speak to attorneys and therefore the world outside,” she said, noting that many prisoners were refusing calls because they did not want to undergo the groping.

“I hope their being discontinued will convince the clients to come out and speak to lawyers again, so we can learn what is happening with the hunger strike more easily," she said.

Of the 166 men imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, more than 100 are refusing to eat to protest their indefinite detention. The government is force-feeding 45 prisoners. The hunger strike began in February.

In a separate Guantanamo case Monday, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said she did not have the jurisdiction to rule on a detainee's petition to stop the force feedings, which she called a painful, humiliating and degrading process. That action, she said, should be taken by U.S. President Barack Obama.


World population day focuses
on millions of teen pregnancies


World Population Day was Thursday and the focus this year is on adolescent pregnancy. It’s estimated that 16 million teenage girls give birth every year. Many are in African or other developing countries.

The United Nations says many teenage girls suffer from complications during child birth that lead to disability, sterility or even death. No one knows for sure how many terminated their pregnancies through unsafe abortions.

“The issue of teenage pregnancy is a major problem for us in Africa. Africa has a youthful population. About 60 percent of the population in Africa is below the age of 24, which means when we talk about pregnancy it’s going to be an issue within that age group," said Akinyele Dairo, senior program and technical advisor for women’s reproductive health at the U.N. Population Fund for the Africa Region.

He said there are several reasons for the high teen pregnancy rate in Africa.

“Number one, not enough comprehensive sexuality education in schools – either because the teachers are not prepared or because it’s not part of the curriculum. The second is that the parents are not well equipped and prepared to be able to train the young people on the issue of sexuality education. The third one is that those who are trained do not even have access to the services that will protect them from teenage pregnancy. And even where services are available in the health facilities the healthcare providers are not friendly enough to encourage the young people to come to the service delivery points,” he said.

Another reason for teenage pregnancy is early marriage.

In many of the countries in Africa, by age 18 about 20 to 40 percent of the females are already married. And these are countries like Mauritania, Mali, like Niger, Chad, even in Ethiopia and Eritrea, where the issue of literacy and education is low they tend to get married early, he said.

Many girls are even taken out of school early by their parents and forced to marry young.

When young girls become pregnant their bodies may not be ready for the many changes that follow. And during childbirth they are more vulnerable to infection or obstetric fistula, which is a hole or tear between the rectum and vagina. It can leave them incontinent and shunned by their community because of the odor.

Dairo said that there’s an unknown number of teenage girls who want to end their pregnancies. But their options are limited.

“In Africa, there are only two countries where abortion is legal. That is Tunisia and South Africa. These are two countries where a young person can go into a health facility to say that I don’t want this pregnancy. I just want it terminated,” he said.

Some African countries allow abortions when the mother’s life is at risk or in cases of rape or incest.

The U.N. Population Fund official said many girls may have what he calls back door abortions. These may be performed by unqualified people or take place in ill-equipped or unsanitary conditions. The result can be bleeding, which can lead to death, or serious infections that can prevent them from ever getting pregnant again.

Dairo said teens need to be much better informed about sexual health through youth-friendly health centers. He says they should be advised to delay sex until they are older or prepared to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. And, he said, they should stay in school.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon said when attention and resources are “devoted to the education, health and well-being of adolescent girls…they will become an even greater force for positive change in society” for generations to come.

 
U.S. residents appear to be split
over telephone surveillance


An Internet privacy group has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to look into the government’s surveillance of phone records over the past seven years. Polls show Americans are divided over this issue.
 
The American public is split over whether the National Security Agency, or NSA, should continue phone and email surveillance to stop terrorists.
 
Some say the concerns are overblown; others maintain that what people do in the privacy of their homes and on the Internet should be their business and nobody else's.
 
A recent Quinnipiac survey shows a reversal in public opinion. Three years ago, Americans overwhelmingly supported anti-terrorism actions over civil liberties. Pollster Peter Brown says a slight majority now think those efforts are eroding freedoms.
 
"That’s a really big change and it’s significant,” says Brown.
 
But other polls show a majority of Americans, 58 percent, support the government’s collection of telephone and Internet data. The basic questions are these: Is the surveillance relevant to a terrorist investigation? And, does the government monitor actual conversations and emails, or just look at who's involved?
 
Some argue it is not content but just metadata that is being collected by the government, and that it is not accurate to classify these activities as surveillance.
 
Others insist that people should decide for themselves whether to regard these efforts as surveillance or not.
 
Gary Schmitt studies security issues for the American Enterprise Institute. He supports NSA actions.
 
“It’s a difficult task because you have to collect an immense amount of data to stay ahead of the terrorist.”
 
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington decides how far the government can go, and the NSA must first make its argument in this court before listening to phone calls involving an American.
 
This, says Schmitt, prevents overreach.

“There are these kinds of layers of scrutiny that they go forward and the court again has the final say into whether there’s enough info relevant to particular case to a particular person.”
 
But the Electronic Privacy Information Center says the court went too far when it made the Verizon Communications company provide its phone records on all Americans. EPIC filed an emergency petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the NSA’s surveillance.
 
Alan Butler is EPIC’s attorney.
 
“Our contention is it’s not possible that all call records of all Americans held by Verizon are relevant to an investigation.”
 
It’s not known if the Supreme Court will take up the case.


Some health Web sites leak
search info to third parties

 
Patients who search on free health-related Web sites for information related to a medical condition may have the health information they provide leaked to third party tracking entities through code on those sites, according to a research letter by Marco D. Huesch of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Between December 2012 and January 2013, using a sample of 20 popular health-related Web sites, Huesch used freely available privacy tools to detect third parties. Commercial interception software also was used to intercept hidden traffic from the researcher’s computer to the Web sites of third parties.

Huesch found that all 20 sites had at least one third-party element, with the average being six or seven. Thirteen of the 20 Web sites had one or more tracking element. No tracking elements were found on physician-oriented sites closely tied to professional groups. Five of the 13 sites that had tracker elements had also enabled social media button tracking. Using the interception tool, searches were leaked to third-party tracking entities by seven Web sites. Search terms were not leaked to third-party tracking sites when done on U.S. government sites or four of the five physician-oriented sites, according to the study results.

“Failure to address these concerns may diminish trust in health-related Web sites and reduce the willingness of some people to access health-related information online,” the study concludes.


House passes U.S. farm bill
that cuts certain subsidies


A $5 billion-per-year subsidy program for U.S. farmers is a step closer to ending. The House of Representatives has passed its version of the Farm Bill, five-year, $100 billion legislation directing U.S. agriculture policy.

It cuts a subsidy called direct payments, which farmers received regardless of need and even went to people who no longer farmed, said House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, a Republican from Oklahoma.

“That thing that’s caused such great angst people getting money for not doing anything. That’s gone," said Lucas.

But the House put in place new programs providing more generous support to corn, wheat, cotton and other commodity farmers if prices for their products fall, says Montana State University economist Vince Smith.

“...which, truthfully, from an economic policy perspective, represents a ludicrous step backwards," said Smith.

Smith says increasing U.S. subsidies when prices are falling would hurt farmers in other countries who don’t get the same support. But he notes the House bill caps the amount paid to U.S. farmers.

The Senate passed its Farm Bill last month. It also eliminates direct payments, and adds a somewhat different price support program. Unlike the House version, it also includes a small measure intended to make international food aid more efficient.

The two chambers will now attempt to work out their differences.

The biggest difference is that the House removed all domestic food aid programs from its bill, a move that split the vote almost entirely along party lines. President Barack Obama has threatened to veto any bill that does not include nutrition assistance programs.


Computer shipments decline
in the face of newer tablets


A technology research group says worldwide shipments of personal computers continue to decline as tablets replace the PC as many people's primary computing device.
 
The U.S.-based Gartner group says worldwide PC shipments dropped nearly 11 percent in the second quarter of 2013 from the same period last year. It said this is the fifth straight quarter of declining shipments — the longest in the PC market's history.
 
The report said that consumers worldwide are instead purchasing more affordable tablet devices. In emerging markets, it said inexpensive tablets have now become the first computing device for many.
 
The devices became popular following the release of Apple's iPad in 2010. Tablet prices have since tumbled, amid heated competition from manufacturers who have flooded the market with cheaper alternatives.
 
Meanwhile, Gartner's third quarter statistics show China's Lenovo overtaking U.S.-based Hewlett Packard as the world's top producer of personal computers. The figures show Lenovo accounted for 16.7 percent of worldwide PC shipments, compared to 16.3 percent for HP.
 
The research group said in October that Lenovo first passed HP as the world's top PC producer. Its more recent data has shown that HP narrowly retook the top spot. But this is the first quarter that data from both Gartner and its rival research firm, IDC, have put Lenovo at the top.


Continued monitoring sought
for possible dangerous viruses


It’s been several months since the H7N9 avian flu virus emerged in China, infecting an estimated 132 people and leaving at least 39 of them dead.   But while there have been no reported cases of the disease since the middle of June, infectious disease experts say it is not time to let down their guard.  

Writing in the journal mBio, Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says the lull in H7N9 infections in China is good news.  But he says this is no reason to think the virus could not reemerge, posing a future threat.

H7N9 can cause pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome and multiple organ failure.  

Fauci and two other leading infectious disease scientists at the institute note that H7N9 is not transmitted easily from chickens to humans or among people.  But H7 subtypes have been responsible for a number of devastating poultry outbreaks in Canada, Mexico, the Netherlands and Italy, which eventually affected people.

That’s because H7 viruses have the ability to mutate from a low-level infection in birds into a highly contagious avian pathogen, which Fauci says could lead to human exposure through poultry markets and large scale culling of diseased flocks.

“You always need to be concerned about the possibility that this virus or these viruses that can attain the capability of more efficient spread.  And if that happens, there will be a problem," said Fauci.

One cause for concern is H7N9-infected pigs.  Swine, which are physiologically more like humans than chickens, are considered a so-called mixing vessel for viruses, a place where viral DNA could mutate, making it easier for the pathogen to infect people.  That's what happened in 2009, with the H1N1 swine flu influenza pandemic.

Given the unknowns about H7N9, and the fact that it killed almost one-third of those who were infected in China, Fauci says the outbreak should prompt enhanced research efforts to better understand the mutation of avian and swine flu viruses into diseases that infect humans.


Premier in Quebec lashes out
at rail firm in tanker disaster


Quebec Premier Pauline Marois lashed out Thursday at the railway boss whose runaway train leveled the center of a tiny Quebec town, as residents came to grips with the reality that 50 of their neighbors were likely dead.

“The behavior of the company and its president has been absolutely deplorable,” Ms. Marois said of the executive, Ed Burkhardt, and the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, whose driverless train of tanker cars smashed into Lac Megantic early Saturday and exploded in a wall of fire.

The Quebec government is making a $58 million aid package available to the many people and businesses affected by the explosion.

The five-locomotive train was hauling 72 tanker cars of crude oil, part of a vast crude-by-rail expansion throughout North America as oil output soars in Canada and the U.S. state of North Dakota, and pipelines run out of space.

Police say they have recovered 20 bodies, with another 30 people still missing and now presumed dead.

Burkhardt said Wednesday he thought the engineer had not set enough handbrakes when he parked his train late on Friday at the end of his shift, and he apologized to residents of the town of 6,000.

The words of remorse came too late for many locals, who accuse Burkhardt of shirking responsibility. A chaotic news conference he gave Wednesday was interrupted by cries of “murderer” from angry residents.

“They still aren't taking the blame,” said one resident, who would give only her first name, Christiane.

More than 200 investigators are working day and night to sift through the charred wreckage in the center of the lakeside town in what authorities say is a crime scene. They have made no arrests.

A death toll of 50 would make the accident the worst rail crash in North America since 1989, and Canada's deadliest accident since in 1998, when a Swissair jet crashed into the Atlantic off the coast of Nova Scotia, killing 229 people.

But while the red zone in the center of town remains closed to all but investigators, some businesses have started to reopen and more than half of the 2,000 people evacuated from their homes on Saturday have been allowed to return.

Office supply shop owner Jean Dube, 54, said he was uncertain whether his insurance would cover his losses because of confusion over whether the building which lies near the blast site was damaged.

His shop will be off limits indefinitely as police and federal investigators sift through the area for bodies and clues to the cause of the crash. He said his store did not appear damaged, but emergency officials told him there was oil and toxic gas in his basement.

“There are details of our policy that we were not aware of. If the building is damaged, our lost revenue is covered for 12 months,” he said. “If there is no damage to the building, we get two weeks. This was shocking when we learned this. They told us that it is the same for other companies here as well.”