PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Northern Sumatra dealing with smoke from fires

Northern Sumatra dealing with smoke from fires
2014-02-28
(Press-News.org) On February 27, 2014, the Wall Street Journal and Southeast Asia Realtime reported that: "the plantation-rich province of Riau on Indonesia's Sumatra Island has declared a state of emergency as fires set for land clearing have sent pollution levels soaring and smoke made breathing difficult for thousands."

Tens of thousands of Riau residents are suffering from the effects of the smoke coming from dozens of fires set to clear land in Sumatra. Riau is the center of Indonesia's more than $20 billion palm oil industry—the world's largest. Fires occur with frequency in Riau due to farmers deliberately setting them to make way for the new planting season.

Residents of Riau, numbering more than six million, continue to struggle with the smoke and haze from those fires. Schools have had to close due to the smoke and haze in an effort to keep school children safe from the polluted air.

According to WSJ, "Clearing land by fire is illegal for all but the smallest landowners. After the haze crisis last June, Indonesia named 10 palm oil and pulpwood companies suspected of setting the blazes. The government said recently that legal cases against all are ongoing. Police in Riau have detained more than three dozen people suspected of starting the fires. None of them have been identified as being affiliated with plantation companies."

Riau is preparing aerial water bombing and ground-based firefighting operations to fight the fires.

This natural-color satellite image was collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Terra satellite on February 28, 2014. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red.

INFORMATION: NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption: NASA/Goddard, Lynn Jenner

[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Northern Sumatra dealing with smoke from fires

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Food production in the northeastern US may need to change if climate does

2014-02-28
BOSTON (February 28, 2014) — If significant climate change occurs in the United States it may be necessary to change where certain foods are produced in order to meet consumer demand. In a paper published online this week in the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, researchers at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University provide an overview of current farmland use and food production in the Northeastern U.S., identifying potential vulnerabilities of the 12-state region*. Led by Tim Griffin, Ph.D., associate professor and director ...

Psychiatric nursing specialists played key role in response to Boston Marathon bombing

2014-02-28
Philadelphia, Pa. (February 28, 2014) – Psychiatric advanced practice nurses (APNs) played a critical role in supporting psychological recovery after the Boston Marathon bombing—not only for injured patients, but also for family members and hospital staff, according to an article in Clinical Nurse Specialist, official journal of the the National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. Barbara Lakatos, DNP, PMHCNS-BC, and colleagues of the Psychiatric Nursing Resource Service ...

Shaky hand, stable spoon: U-M study shows device helps essential tremor patients

Shaky hand, stable spoon: U-M study shows device helps essential tremor patients
2014-02-28
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — For people whose hands shake uncontrollably due to a medical condition, just eating can be a frustrating and embarrassing ordeal – enough to keep them from sharing a meal with others. But a small new study conducted at the University of Michigan Health System suggests that a new handheld electronic device can help such patients overcome the hand shakes caused by essential tremor, the most common movement disorder. In a clinical trial involving 15 adults with moderate essential tremor, the device improved patients' ability to hold a spoon still enough ...

A molecular ballet under the X-ray laser

2014-02-28
An international team of researchers has used the world's most powerful X-ray laser to take snapshots of free molecules. The research team headed by Prof. Jochen Küpper of the Hamburg Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) choreographed a kind of molecular ballet in the X-ray beam. With this work, the researchers have cleared important hurdles on the way to X-ray images of individual molecules, as they explain in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters. CFEL is a cooperation of DESY, the University of Hamburg, and the Max Planck Society. "We have captured ...

Indonesia's competitiveness at risk from neglected diseases of poverty

2014-02-28
WASHINGTON, D.C. – February 27, 2014 – The control and elimination of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) is one of the most cost-effective ways Indonesia can sustain economic growth and reduce inequality, said scientists today in an analysis published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. While Indonesia is poised to defeat NTDs by 2020, it has an opportunity to scale up national programs, integrate NTDs with other development efforts, strengthen coordination and enhance collaboration among key partners. The analysis calls NTDs "one of the most potent forces" trapping ...

NASA saw rainfall rates increase before birth of Tropical Storm Faxai

NASA saw rainfall rates increase before birth of Tropical Storm Faxai
2014-02-28
VIDEO: NASA/JAXA's TRMM Satellite provided data of developing Tropical Storm Faxai to make this 3-D image that showed some towering thunderstorms in the area were reaching altitudes of up to 15.5km/~9.6... Click here for more information. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite passed over System 93W in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean and saw rainfall rates increasing on February 27 in the developing tropical low pressure area. On February 28, the low organized ...

Peat soils as gigantic batteries

2014-02-28
This news release is available in German. Wetlands, including peatlands, have a high content of humic substances, which are organic compounds that form during incomplete decomposition of biomass. Under anoxic conditions, soil bacteria can use these organic compounds during respiration as electron acceptors. Many organisms (including us humans) instead use oxygen as the electron acceptor. In the mid-1990s, researchers revealed that some anaerobic microorganisms in soils and sediments use humic substances as electron acceptors under anoxic conditions. However, the capacity ...

Giant sunspot makes third trip across the sun

Giant sunspot makes third trip across the sun
2014-02-28
A giant sunspot – a magnetically strong and complex region on the sun's surface – has just appeared over the sun's horizon. This is the third trip for this region across the face of the sun, which takes approximately 27 days to make a complete rotation. Scientists track sunspots that are part of active regions, which often produce large explosions on the sun such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. Each time an active region appears it is assigned a number. Active regions that have survived their trip around the back of the sun and reappear are assigned ...

New fast and furious black hole found

New fast and furious black hole found
2014-02-28
A team of Australian and American astronomers have been studying nearby galaxy M83 and have found a new superpowered small black hole, named MQ1, the first object of its kind to be studied in this much detail. Astronomers have found a few compact objects that are as powerful as MQ1, but have not been able to work out the size of the black hole contained within them until now. The team observed the MQ1 system with multiple telescopes and discovered that it is a standard-sized small black hole, rather than a slightly bigger version that was theorised to account for all ...

Researchers discover unusual genetic mutation linked to adolescent liver cancer

Researchers discover unusual genetic mutation linked to adolescent liver cancer
2014-02-28
In the race for better treatments and possible cures, rare diseases are often left behind. In a collaboration of researchers at The Rockefeller University, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the New York Genome Center (NYGC), an unusual mutation has been found that is strongly linked to one such disease: a rare liver cancer that affects teens and young adults. The results, published this week in Science, suggest that the mutation plays a key role in the development of the disease, called fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma, and may also underlie more common cancers ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

International collaboration enabled participatory stock assessment on glass eel fisheries in West Java, Indonesia

Enhanced melanoma vaccine offers improved survival for men

Nearly one-third of patients with TBI have marginal or inadequate health literacy

Genetic causes of cerebral palsy uncovered through whole-genome sequencing

Modesty and boastfulness – perception depends on usual performance

Do sweeteners increase your appetite? New evidence from randomised controlled trial says no 

Women with obesity do not need to gain weight during pregnancy, new study suggests

Individuals with multiple sclerosis face substantially greater risk of hospitalisation and death from COVID-19, despite high rates of vaccination

Study shows obesity in childhood associated with a more than doubling of risk of developing multiple sclerosis in early adulthood

Rice Emerging Scholars Program receives $2.5M NSF grant to boost STEM education

Virtual rehabilitation provides benefits for stroke recovery

Generative AI develops potential new drugs for antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Biofuels could help island nations survive a global catastrophe, study suggests

NJIT research team discovering how fluids behave in nanopores with NSF grant

New study shows association of historical housing discrimination and shortfalls in colon cancer treatment

Social media use may help to empower plastic surgery patients

Q&A: How to train AI when you don't have enough data

Wayne State University researchers uncover potential treatment targets for Zika virus-related eye abnormalities

Discovering Van Gogh in the wild: scientists unveil a new gecko species

Small birds spice up the already diverse diet of spotted hyenas in Namibia

Imaging detects transient “hypoxic pockets” in the mouse brain

Dissolved organic matter could be used to track and improve the health of freshwaters

Indoor air quality standards in public buildings would boost health and economy, say international experts

Positive associations between premenstrual disorders and perinatal depression

New imaging method illuminates oxygen's journey in the brain

Researchers discover key gene for toxic alkaloid in barley

New approach to monitoring freshwater quality can identify sources of pollution, and predict their effects

Bidirectional link between premenstrual disorders and perinatal depression

Cell division quality control ‘stopwatch’ uncovered

Vaccine protects cattle from bovine tuberculosis, may eliminate disease

[Press-News.org] Northern Sumatra dealing with smoke from fires