The Speaker News: September 2014

Tuesday 30 September 2014

California Bans Plastic Bags - First State to Do So

The governor of California has signed the first statewide plastic bag ban in the US. Single-use plastic bags will be prohibited at grocery and convenience stores.

“This bill is a step in the right direction—it reduces the torrent of plastic polluting our beaches, parks and even the vast ocean itself,” said California Gov. Jerry Brown. “We’re the first to ban these bags, and we won’t be the last.”

Gov. Brown signed bill SB270 Tuesday–the first statewide ban in the US. Over 100 cities and counties throughout California already have local bans, however.

Plastic bags will be phased out of use at convenience stores, grocery stores and supermarkets next summer, when the bill is scheduled to take effect. The bill also allows stores to charge over 10 cents for using paper bags.

However, the fees will be waved for customers who are on public assistance. Lawmakers felt that SB270 would penalize lower-income Californians by charging for bags that were previously free. Use of the proceeds from the fees will also be regulated under the new law.

The bill will not apply to bags used for fruit, vegetables or meats, or to bags used at other retailers.

The bill is being opposed by a national coalition of plastic bag manufacturers. The coalition, proceeding under their trade group, the American Progressive Bag Alliance, is running a campaign characterizing the ban as a cash-giveaway to grocers that will cause thousands of job losses. They are calling for a referendum on the matter.

Other states are also banning single-use plastic bags. Hawaii is expected to follow California with a state-wide ban–all Hawaii’s counties have already approved prohibitions. Local bans have also been implemented in Chicago, Austin, Seattle and other US cities, and legislation is pending in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Puerto Rico.

By Sid Douglas

California Bans Plastic Bags - First State to Do So

Monday 29 September 2014

Do Lions Roar?

Do lions roar?

Yes, lions roar.

There are four cats that can roar: lions, leopards, jaguars and tigers.

How do lions roar?

Lions have fat, flat, square-shaped vocal folds. The square shape is unusual–most animals have triangular folds. The square shape allows tissue to respond more easily to passing air.

The loose, gel-like vocal folds of a lion make irregular vibrations and rough sounds–characteristic of roaring.

The vocal folds of lions are also very strong, and can withstand stretching and shearing, so lions car push large amounts of air through their vocal folds and create loud roars.

How loud can lions roar?

As loud as 114 decibels–25 times the volume of a gas-powered lawn mower.

When do lions roar?

Usually, the male lion roars to scare off anything that may threaten his family.

Female lions roar–gently–when they call their cubs. Males also use a softer roar when they communicate with cubs.

Lions also roar to communicate with each other. Because lions each sound different when they roar, they can be identified this way.

Do Lions Roar?

White House Changes Neutral Position on Hong Kong, Supports the Hong Kong Vote

The White House, which had maintained a neutral stance regarding attempts by Hong Kong citizens to regain universal suffrage in the face of Chinese national oppression, changed its position Monday and supported democracy in Hong Kong.

“The United States supports universal suffrage in Hong Kong in accordance with the Basic Law and we support the aspirations of the Hong Kong people,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest in a press briefing, Monday.

“We believe that the basic legitimacy of the chief executive in Hong Kong will be greatly enhanced if the Basic Law’s ultimate aim of selection of the chief executive by universal suffrage is fulfilled,” said Earnest.

“We have consistently made our position known to Beijing, and will continue to do so.”

“We do not take sides in the discussion of Hong Kong’s political development, nor do we support any particular individuals or groups involved in it. We encourage all sides to refrain from actions that would further escalate tensions, to exercise restraint, and to express views on the SAR’s political future in a peaceful manner.”

The US government had faced criticism in recent weeks for an apparent lack of action regarding the events in China.

Tens of thousands of Hong Kong citizens have been demonstrating for their right to universal suffrage over the past week, after the Chinese government decided it would only allow political candidates to run for the 2017 elections in Hong Kong who met the approval of the Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China (CPC).

By Day Blakely Donaldson

White House Changes Neutral Position on Hong Kong, Supports the Hong Kong Vote

Men Getting More Abuse Online Than Women - Study

According to a recent study, and despite popular sentiment that the internet is not safe for women, men may be ones who receives the most abuse on social media. According to think tank Demos, male public figures are several times more likely than female public figures to receive abuse on Twitter.

The think tank analyzed over 2 million tweets over a two-week period. The sample of public figures included celebrities, politicians, journalists and musicians. An equal number was chosen for males and females.

Despite recent claims that the internet is misogynist and is particularly unsafe for women, the think tank found that men were more often abused than women, at least on Twitter.

Over 2.5 percent of tweets directed at the males–tweets containing the @username–contained abuse. Less than 1 percent of the tweets directed at the females was abusive.

That is, over 1 in 20 tweets sent to the males included abuse. Only 1 in 70 tweets directed at the females included abuse.

There was one category, however, where female celebrities received more abuse than men: journalism. Females in this line of work recieved abuse around 3 times as often as men.

Males were found to also be the most common abusers. Men were behind 75 percent of abusive tweets toward other men, and were behind over 60 percent of abusive tweets directed toward women.

There may be more to the issue than can be understood based on these figures alone, however.

According to a recent Harvard study, men have 15 percent more followers than women, men are almost twice as likely to follow another man than a woman, women are 25 percent more likely to follow men than women, and the average man is 40 percent more likely to be followed by another man than by a woman.

The Harvard team concluded that, although there are more women on Twitter, and unlike most other social networks, men dominate the action on Twitter.

By Eliana Ramos

Men Getting More Abuse Online Than Women - Study

IBM Develops New Brainlike Chip, 180,000x More Efficient Than Modern CPUs

The new chip developed by IBM has 4096 cores, 1 million programmable neurons, and 5.4 billion transistors, heralding what some are calling a new era in computing.

The chip, called TrueNorth, is the most advanced neuromorphic (brain-like) chip created, and is incredibly efficient.

The chip consumes only 72 milliwatts at maximum load–equivalent to 400 billion synaptic operations per second per watt. The chip is therefore around 180,000 times more efficient than a modern CPU, and almost 800 times more efficient than other cutting-edge neuromorphic approaches.

Spokespeople for IBM commented on the TrueNorth chip, “One of the key problems with developing a new chip based on a novel architecture is that you also have to create developer tools and software that actually make efficient use of those thousands of cores and billions of synapses. Fortunately, IBM’s already got that covered: Last year it released a specialized programming language (Corelet) and simulator (Compass) that let you program and test your neuromorphic programs before running them on actual hardware.”

“Ultimately, the main purpose of the SyNAPSE project is to take existing systems that simulate the functionality of the brain in software — such as deep neural networks — and run them on hardware that was specifically designed for the task. As you may already know, dedicated hardware tends to orders of magnitude more efficient than simulating/emulating the hardware in software on a general-purpose CPU. This is why IBM is touting some utterly incredible efficiency figures for TrueNorth. For neural networks with high spike rates and a large number of active synapses, TrueNorth can deliver 400 billion synaptic operations per second (SOPS) per watt. When running the exact same neural network, a general-purpose CPU is 176,000 times less energy efficient, while a state-of-the-art multiprocessor neuromorphic system (48 chips, each with 18 cores) is 769 times less efficient. While it’s not directly comparable, the world’s most efficient supercomputer only manages around 4.5 billion FLOPS per watt.

“I don’t think IBM is actually getting back into the consumer electronics market (though that would be amusing). Rather, this is just a concept of the kind of thing the TrueNorth chip might one day enable.”

A technical reserach paper was published in Science today, titled “A million spiking-neuron integrated circuit with a scalable communication network and interface.”

By Andy Stern

IBM Develops New Brainlike Chip, 180,000x More Efficient Than Modern CPUs

Men Read More News, But Women Read More Fiction

There are variations in who reads what between the sexes. American men have been found to read more news and to discuss news more often than women. Men also use social media platforms that are more commonly used for news discussion than women. Women, however, read fiction much more than men, even when extremely female-oriented genres are factored-out. Women seem to be writing more of the most popular novels as well.

The Newspaper Association of America has found that a greater percentage of men read news than women. Nearly 2 million more men are reading news in the US, despite the fact that there are nearly 8 million more females than males in America. Women, however, are more frequent readers of Sunday edition news than men.

US men are also bigger users of online discussion forums such as Reddit. The average Reddit user is male (59 percent site-wide). Men are also the biggest users of LinkedIn and Google+, while women are bigger users of Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.

Women and men also read news differently.

Men more closely follow sports, science, technology, business, international, political, and consumer news, while women more closely follow religion, health, entertainment, community, arts and culture, crime and weather news.

More specifically, men are more interested in stories about sporting events, international conflict, international politics, court cases, economic conditions, and social issues like immigration, while women are more interested in stories about tornadoes, kidnapped boys, floods, missing pregnant women, trapped coal miners, infectious diseases, contaminated pet food and toy recalls.

Women read more fiction than men. The marked difference between the sexes in novel-reading habits has been consistent. This is true even when the female-targeted romance genre is removed from calculations. Women account for 80 percent of the fiction market.

A recent memorable–although unscientific–experiment by British author Ian McEwan in a London park saw almost all of the people willing to accept the books McEwan and offered to give away taken by women, prompting the writer to say, “When women stop reading, the novel will be dead.”

Women read more novels, more often finish novels they start, more often have opened the books on their shelves, and are more likely to tell the truth about having read a book they say they have read.

It seems that women are also writing more of the most popular novels. A recent New York Times best-seller list contained 11 novels written by women, and four by men.

By Heidi Woolf

Sunday 28 September 2014

Do Lions Live in the Jungle?

Do Lions live in the jungle?

Lions are called “king of the jungle,” but besides a small population of Asiatic lions that live in the Gir Forest of India–which, by the way, was a subspecies much more widespread in times past–lions live on the open plains of Africa.

So why do we call lions “king of the jungle” instead of “king of the savanna?”

Jungle is a word that is sometimes used to mean a place of intense, often ruthless competition–similar to the noun “wild.”

Lions were top predators in some of the wild regions of Africa. Lions fight for territory, and kill each other in the struggle. Successful lions maintain a pride of female lions, which serve the male lion by much of the smaller food that lions eat.

Do Lions Live in the Jungle?

Saturday 27 September 2014

DIY Chocolate Ice Cream... Without an Ice Cream Machine

You don’t need an ice cream maker/machine to make real creamy smooth gelato from milk. This low fat recipe contains no cream, custard or artificial thickeners – only milk, eggs and sugar (and chocolate!) To make it even healthier you can half the sugar and chocolate amount :)

Make your own ice cream at home – use it for an ice cream sandwich! Gelato al cioccolato cremoso senza gelatiera, fatto in casa.

You can also make it without eggs:

If you are considering buying an ice cream maker online–which also make frozen yogurt and sorbet, they range from around $50 up. Here’s one to take a look at, on Amazon: Click here.

DIY Chocolate Ice Cream... Without an Ice Cream Machine

DIY Chocolate Apple Sprinkles Snack

Simply cut an Apple into thin slices, dip in melted chocolate and decorate with sprinkles.

The apple is healthy, and chocolate–if it is dark chocolate–is healthy:

When most of us think of chocolate we know that while it may be fun to eat, that it can also make us fatter than we are today. Chocolate is not considered a food that you should eat while you’re dieting as it’s usually rich in sugar and calories.

Surprisingly, though, dark chocolate is a different story. Most people don’t know about the many health benefits of dark chocolate and they should because it can prove to be a blessed addition to any weight loss process. Yes, I said weight loss.

Not every product which has “Dark Chocolate” printed on the cover really deserves that name. As most chocolates are filled with added sugar, you want to make sure that what you’re eating will have a high dose of cocoa which is what makes dark chocolate healthy. A good rule of thumb would be to eat anything with 70% cocoa content or more. I usually go for 85% but most people find that to be too bitter. 70% should be enough and will still contain a lot of sweetness.

We all know how hard it is to stick to a diet plan and be deprived of anything sweet. This is where darker chocolate can actually help you lose weight. Being as healthy as it is, which we will get into in a moment, and rather low in sugar, it can help you satisfy your sweet tooth without filling you with empty calories and sugar. This can help you stick to your diet plan for longer and lose more weight in the long run.

But this isn’t the end of the benefits of dark chocolate. It gets much better than this. You see, dark chocolate is rich in flavonoids, powerful antioxidants which help your body destroy free radicals.

Free radicals are nasty little molecules which circle around in your body and attack your cells from within. They’re destructive, potentially hazardous, and accelerate the aging process. Antioxidants are your best allies in the fight against these free radicals and dark chocolate if full of them.

The problem with milk chocolate is that it seems that milk interrupts how the body digests antioxidants, so you’re not only getting tons of sugar but not enjoying the benefits either.

In addition, dark chocolate has been shown to act as an effective stress reducer. It basically helps you alleviate tension and induces a feeling of well-being. Naturally, this is something which can also lead to a sort of addiction, but as long as you eat it in moderation, the stress reduction effect can prove to be very beneficial.

Most people don’t know, but stress can lead to an increase in abdominal fat. This means that dark chocolate can actually help you lose belly fat. Surprising, right?

Naturally, this article is not an invitation to stuff yourself silly with chocolate. You shouldn’t overdo things. However, a small bar here and there can do little harm and much good.

To learn how to lose belly fat fast, go to How to Burn Belly Fat Fast.

To learn more about why chocolate is healthy go here: Healthy Benefits of Dark Chocolate.

John Davenport lost over 30 pounds in his twenties after being overweight most of his life. He now runs a weight loss forum and publishes a diet and fitness newsletter.

DIY Chocolate Apple Sprinkles Snack

DIY Clock Ideas--Some of these are pretty clever

To buy the Quartz movement (the clock part you can attach to anything you want), it costs about $5 at Amazon: Here’s one.

DIY Clock Ideas--Some of these are pretty clever

What You Need to Know About Stair Handrails

Here are the basics of what you need to know about stair handrails before attempting this DIY project. Building your own wooden stair handrails can be a challenging and rewarding process. Before you try to tackle this project, it is important that you understand stair handrail terminology.

Main Parts

The rails are the horizontal pieces into which the balusters fit. The top rail is the handrail, and the bottom rail is the shoe rail. Each rail is plowed out along its length, leaving a space in which to fit the balusters.

What You Need to Know About Stair Handrails (8)

The balusters (or spindles) are the vertical pieces that fit into the hand and shoe rails. They come in two sizes: 1 1/4 inch and 1 3/4 inch, and two styles: square or turned. Turned rails have been spun on a lathe to create different designs, however, their tops and bottoms are kept square so they fit into the plowed out areas of the rails.

Fillets are strips of wood, which fill in the plowed areas of the rails, holding the balusters snugly in place, keeping them evenly spaced, and giving a finished look to the rail. They are a convenient option to drilling holes for the balusters, and come in a variety of profiles.

Newel Posts

Newel posts come in a large variety of shapes and sizes, and you should select your newel posts with location in mind. They can be square or turned, plain or fancy, and come in many different styles. One example of a newel post would be a square post with an acorn top. Some styles of newel posts require some extra mounting plates for proper installation.

Other Parts

There are other parts that may be necessary, depending on the style of handrail that you decide to install.

Rosettes are optional wooden pieces that fit between the handrail and the wall. They add a decorative touch, or you can omit them for a clean and simple look.

Cap boards cover the knee wall that the railing may be built on.

Bull nose is an optional covering for either a floor edge or a stair edge where the railing overlooks a landing or a room.

Consistency

It is important that when you select and order parts to build your handrail, you choose parts that work and fit together, and that the top and bottom rail match. Once you have decided which size of baluster to use, you must consistently choose that size for the balusters, the plowed out area in the rails, and the fillets, or they will not fit together.

Safety

OSHA has set height requirements for the safe construction of handrails, and it is important to meet these requirements when working on your project.

Building your own wooden stair handrail is a basic, satisfying project that can be modified in many different ways to fit your style and budget.

C.L. Hendricks has been a Jill-of-all-trades, become an expert in some and now uses her experience and training to provide web content for many websites and blogs. Finish carpentry [http://www.finishcarpentryhelp.com] is just one of the topics about which she writes.

Need help with woodworking plans and projects? 14,000 here in this set:

What You Need to Know About Stair Handrails

Echidnas: These Mammals Lay Eggs

Echidnas live in Australia and the island of New Guinea. They are the most widespread mammal in Australia.

They are also called spiny anteaters.

They eat mostly ants, termites, worms and grubs.

The echidnas pictured here are short-beaked echidnas.

Echidnas lay eggs.

Do you know the word for the five species of mammals that lay eggs?

Monotremes.

The Platypus and four species of echidnas are the only mammals that lay eggs.

Then, like other mammals, the mother nurses her babies with milk.

Echidnas are covered with spikes, but there are also short hairs in there.

What else is unusual about the bodies of echidnas?

Echidnas become torpid in both extremely hot and extremely cold weather. Their body temperatures drop to 39 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius).

They have no external neck.

Also, their snouts have electro-receptors that help detect prey.

Their tongues are very long–almost 7 inches (17cm)–and are covered with fine barbs.

Do you know why their tongues are covered with barbs?

To help snag insects.

Echidnas: These Mammals Lay Eggs

Do Lions Purr?

Do lions purr?

It is debated. If they do, the purr of lions still sounds different from the purr of domestic cats.

The noise lions make that some consider to be purring sounds like a cough or growl. They usually make this noise when they are in together with other lions, and when they communicate with kittens.

What is purring?

This is disputed, too. Some think purring is the noise made by the vibration of a flexible bone, called a hyloid bone, located within the necks of cats. Others think false vocal chords, located just behind cats’ actual vocal chords, create the sound. Lions and most big cats have hyloid bones slightly different from those possessed by small cats–those of big cats are less flexible. This is why some people think that lions and other big cats are not able to purr.

Do Lions Purr?

Do Bears Hibernate?

Bears over-winter by sleeping in caves and burrows. Their core-body temperatures drop 3-5 degrees Celsius.

Three to five Celsius is a small change in core-body temperature compared with other species that undergo up to 32 degree changes during hibernation.

Because the core-body temperature of bears doesn’t drop as much as other hibernators, it is still debated whether bears really hibernate.

But the prevailing opinion is that bears do hibernate.

The 3-5 degree change represents a lower metabolic rate of up to 75 percent lower than bears’ basal metabolic rate.

The definition of hibernation is not the degree of temperature change. Hibernation is defined by metabolic suppression.

Bears’ metabolisms are suppressed during the over-wintering period.

Bears in the most northerly regions will not eat or drink for up to eight months, and rely only on stored body-fat for energy and water–metabolic suppression allows this.

Bears’ bodies also recycle proteins and urine during over-wintering, so bears do not suffer muscle atrophy and do not need to urinate for months.

Anyone interested in some hard science? Hibernation in Black Bears: Independence of Metabolic Suppression from Body Temperature

Title photo by: Doug Brown

Do Bears Hibernate?

What animal is Arthur?

What animal is Arthur, from the TV series?

(Photo by Gary Oppenheim)

This African animal eats ants and termites–a very specialized diet.

Which do you think it prefers–ants or termites?

Ants. In the summer there are plenty of ants, but in the winter, ants are not as available, and Aardvarks eat more termites.

How do you think the Aardvark gets its food?

It digs for them.

(Photo by: Xenocryst)

Aardvarks have powerful limbs and shovel-like claws. They can dig rapidly.

They dig at night. They’re nocturnal.

Another thing that helps Aardvarks dig is the dense mat of hair around their nostrils, which filters out dust.

And when they catch ants, how they eat them depends on what kind of ants they find.

Aardvarks chew one species of ant with its molar teeth. But other ants and termites are swallowed whole. In fact, most of the food an Aardvark eats is swallowed without chewing.

Aardvarks can sort of chew in their stomachs, though.

Aardvarks have muscular stomachs, and grind their food inside.

(Photo by: Heather Paul)

What animal is Arthur?

What animal is Timon from the Lion King?

What animal is Timon from the Disney’s “The Lion King?”

This animal, with silvery brown, grizzled coat and eight bands of dark fur on the lower half of its body, is a Meerkat.

It is also called a Suricate.

They live in southwestern South America, and are common.

It is good at burrowing. What anatomy does a Meerkat have that helps it in digging underground?

For one, it has long foreclaws. It can root up food items using these, too.

For another, the Meerkat has small, pointed ears, but it can close–and it does this when it goes underground.

Meerkats live in groups. How many animals live in one group, do you think?

Around 30. They live in enlarged burrow systems of Ground Squirrels.

They act as a group, too.

Most Meerkats in a group forage for food–mostly insects. But not all.

Some members of the group act as sentries.

They stand at vantage points–atop mounds or in bushes–where they keep an eye out for predators.

Meerkat - Suricate

Can you name a predator of Meerkats?

The hawk.

When a hawk or other predatory bird is spotted, Meerkats make cheeping or clucking warning noises. If the threat becomes serious, they growl or make sharper barks.

When they are seriously threatened, they all dive underground to be safe.

Meerkats can stand on their hind legs. They do this first thing in the morning.

Meerkats emerge from their burrows and stand facing the sun to warm themselves.

What animal is Timon from the Lion King?