As Americans flock to beaches this summer, their toes are sinking into some of the most hotly contested real estate in the United States.
It wasn’t always this way. Through the mid-20th century, when the U.S. population was smaller and the coast was still something of a frontier in many states, laissez-faire and absentee coastal landowners tolerated people crossing their beachfront property.
Now, however, the coast has filled up. Property owners are much more inclined to seek to exclude an ever-growing population of beachgoers seeking access to less and less beach.
On most U.S. shorelines, the public has a time-honored right to “lateral” access. This means that people can move down the beach along the wet sand between high and low tide – a zone that usually is publicly owned. Waterfront property owners’ control typically stops at the high tide line or, in a very few cases, the low tide line.
But as climate change raises sea levels, property owners are trying to harden their shorelines with sea walls and other types of armoring, squeezing the sandy beach and the public into a shrinking and diminished space.
As director of the Conservation Clinic at the University of Florida College of Law and the Florida Sea Grant Legal Program, and as someone who grew up with sand between my toes, I have studied beach law and policy for most of my career.
In my view, the collision between rising seas and coastal development – known as “coastal squeeze” – now represents an existential threat to beaches, and to the public’s ability to reach them.
Since the start of the pandemic, public health experts have been concerned about what might happen if large sections of the U.S. population, for whatever reason, did not get vaccinated.
Championing
chrononutrition with protein, the morning elixir for muscle growth
Waseda
University
Proteins
constitute an essential dietary component that help in the growth and repair of
the body. Composed of long chains of amino acids, proteins promote the growth
of skeletal muscles, the group of muscles that help us move.
Humans have been
aware of the benefits of proteins for long. However, recent studies have shown
that having the right amount of protein at the right time of the day is essential
for proper growth. This is called 'Chrononutrition,' in which when you eat is
as important as what and how you eat.
The
reason behind this is the body's internal biological clock, called the
'circadian rhythm.' This rhythm is followed by all cells and controls life
functions like metabolism and growth. Interestingly, protein digestion and
absorption have been found to fluctuate across day and night according to this
clock.
Moreover, earlier studies have reported that intake of protein at
breakfast and lunch promotes skeletal muscle growth in adults. However, details
on the effect of the time of protein intake on muscle growth and function have
remained elusive till date.
Fortunately,
researchers from Waseda University, led by Professor Shigenobu Shibata, recently
endeavored to understand the effect of the distribution of protein intake
through the day on muscles.
Here's Scabby on the picket line during the 2013 strike at Lawrence & Memorial Hospital, Westerly Hospital's owner at the time. Photo by Will Collette
President
Joe Biden can start saying, “I’m the guy who saved Scabby The Rat,” now that
the National Labor Relations Board has shot down right-wing efforts to
permanently deflate one of organized labor’s most valuable tools.
On
Wednesday, the NLRB — led by Biden-appointed Lauren McFerran — issued a 3-1 decision upholding
the right of unions to deploy the large balloon in ongoing labor disputes.
Biden
fired former NLRB head Peter Robb on his first day in office and subsequently
replaced him with McFerran.Robb, the infamous
union-busting lawyer who helped President Ronald Reagan crush the air traffic controllers’ union in 1981, was a
Donald Trump darling who had long harbored a deep-seated hatred toward Scabby The Rat. Robb was
itching to eradicate him as soon as possible.
With
Robb at the NLRB’s helm, emboldened anti-worker business owners around the
country soon stepped up their efforts to keep Scabby the Rat caged and far away
from their doorsteps.
Scabby
references the word scab, a derogatory name for a strike-breaker.
Last week, Bloomberg
Newsreported that
Amazon planned to release an Alexa-enabled tracking device for children.
This latest
revelation—which isn't Amazon's first attempt at
targeting children with tracking-like devices—comes as no surprise from a
corporation that has made surveillance a critical part of its business model.
As Amazon continues
its relentless crusade to monopolize markets, crush rivals, and extract as much
data as possible from unsuspecting consumers and third-party merchants,
Congress and federal law enforcers must step up to restructure the corporation
and prevent it from using these harmful practices.
As of June 2021,
Amazon has 6.2 million sellers and 1.6 million active sellers, making it the
world's largest e-commerce platform. Amazon also has near-absolute dominance
across a range of markets, including almost 50% market share in e-commerce, 90%
in e-books, and 32% in cloud computing.
Critically, in these
markets, Amazon acts as an intermediary between separate user groups—such as
between customer and merchant on its Marketplace e-commerce platform.
By virtue of its
market position, Amazon possesses an extraordinary amount of control to
structure the relationship between the parties and their relationships with
Amazon. The corporation can employ tactics that allow it to radically extend
its surveillance infrastructure and fortify its dominance.
New Freshwater Fishing Regulations Take Effect July 31
The Department of Environmental Management (DEM) announces
that new Rhode Island Freshwater Fishing Rules and Regulations (Title 250,
Chapter 60. Part 10) will take effect statewide on Saturday, July 31. Two
changes pertain to the Beaver River, as follows:
• Section 10-6.1-16: The Beaver River in Richmond is now designated as a
no kill, "catch-and-release only" area. This includes the portion
from the confluence of the Beaver River and the Pawcatuck River, located
downstream of Shannock Hill Road, Richmond, upstream to New London Turnpike,
Richmond. Fishing is permitted with artificial lures equipped with a single
barbless hook or single barbed hook that has been crimped, and all fish caught
shall be returned to the water immediately. The possession of any trout,
salmon, or charr while fishing in this section of the river shall be primary
evidence that said trout, salmon, or charr was taken in violation of these
Rules and Regulations.
• Section 10.6.1-17: The Beaver River has been removed from the trout
stocking list; it will no longer be stocked with hatchery-raised trout.
The Beaver River is home to a robust population of wild brook trout.
Brook trout are listed as a Species of Greatest Conservation Need in the 2015
Rhode Island Wildlife Action Plan.
Continuous work by DEM's Division of Fish
and Wildlife focuses on documenting the distribution of brook trout across
Rhode Island and implementing management actions to improve populations. The
Town of Richmond's recent Beaver River Watershed Assessment report identifies
the Beaver River as a priority area for habitat conservation for wild brook
trout, including altering trout stocking practices.
Space Station fly-over of Charlestown tonight By Will Collette
For the first time in a while, we are getting a nice six-minute International Space Station flyover and a "mostly clear" sky at the same time. I have not posted notices when the weather forecast was poor even though we have had several 6 and 7 minute maximum length overflights. Normally, I make some remark that celestial mechanics that makes overflight times and locations something you can count on.
However, there was a mishap yesterday when a new Russian module docked with the station and then somehow, its booster rockets ignited, pushing the station out of position. The crew managed to regain control after a hectic one hour of trouble.
The incident is still under investigation and the crew has been looking to see if there was any damage (none reported so far).
NASA has indefinitely postponed the launch of Boeing's new un-crewed Starliner capsule which was supposed to head up to the ISS.
Anyway, for the first time in the 10 years I have been posting notice of Charlestown overflights, I am not 100% sure how precise this NASA e-mail is:
Time: Fri Jul 30 9:03 PM, Visible: 6 min, Max Height: 48°,
Appears: 10° above NW, Disappears: 14° above ESE
Members of the New York Yankees, U.S. Olympic gymnast Kara Eaker and U.K. health secretary Sajid Javid are some of those diagnosed with what is called a “breakthrough infection.”
As scary as the term may sound, the bottom line is that the existing COVID-19 vaccines are still very good at preventing symptomatic infections, and breakthrough infections happen very rarely. But just how common and how dangerous are they? Here’s a guide to what you need to know.
This piece of property on Canning Street in Cumberland, R.I., contains freshwater wetlands, and the town has objected to its proposed development. (Brian P. D. Hannon/ecoRI News)
State
environmental officials have given a green light to a planning proposal by the
governor’s chief of staff to develop a small piece of suburban property located
on freshwater wetlands.
Tony Silva, McKee's chief of staff (Valley Breeze)
The Rhode Island Department of
Environmental Management (DEM) approved the development at 45 Canning St. by
Tony Silva, chief of staff to Gov. Dan McKee, in a decision issued in early
June.
Wedged between two adjacent homes
and mowed lawns on the quiet street, the slice of property is overgrown with
trees covering the view of the wetland surface beneath.
When Cumberland officials were first
made aware that the project was being considered by DEM, the town’s planning
director, Jonathan Stevens, wrote in a Nov. 22, 2019 letter
to the state agency that the applicant proposes a wetland disturbance of at
least 5,196 square feet, or 93 percent of the entire 5,600-square-foot lot.
“The proposed ratio of disturbance
to lot size is extremely excessive and unreasonable,” Stevens wrote.
The planning director also noted the
chronic flooding problems that plague this section of Canning Street.
“Displacing this wetland with additional impervious surfaces stands to adversely
affect downstream residential properties,” he wrote.
At the end of his letter, Stevens
requested that DEM deny the application, “as granting approval will not be in
the best public interest.”
In another letter to DEM five months
later, Stevens noted none of the amendments to the revised application
justifies the town changing its objection to the project. “The application
still proposes to disturb an astonishing 93% of existing wetlands on the lot,”
he wrote.
“The proposed drainage swale channel
in conjunction with the pipe replacement only benefits the owner of the lot in
question, whose water-saturated lot would be drained and made potentially
buildable,” Stevens wrote in the April 17 letter.
“The
additional stormwater conveyance efficiency would have a negligible beneficial
effect on the stormwater ponding and potential flooding at this Canning Street
location, and an inordinately adverse impact on the adjacent lot receiving the
stormwater flows at higher rate.”
Engineers
at the University of California San Diego developed a soft and stretchy
ultrasound patch that can be worn on the skin to monitor blood flow through
major arteries and veins deep inside a person's body.
Knowing how fast
and how much blood flows through a patient's blood vessels is important because
it can help clinicians diagnose various cardiovascular conditions, including
blood clots; heart valve problems; poor circulation in the limbs; or blockages
in the arteries that could lead to strokes or heart attacks.
The new
ultrasound patch developed at UC San Diego can continuously monitor blood flow
-- as well as blood pressure and heart function -- in real time. Wearing such a
device could make it easier to identify cardiovascular problems early on.
A team led by
Sheng Xu, a professor of nanoengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of
Engineering, reported the patch in a paper published July 16 in Nature Biomedical
Engineering.
The patch can be
worn on the neck or chest. What's special about the patch is that it can sense
and measure cardiovascular signals as deep as 14 centimeters inside the body in
a non-invasive manner. And it can do so with high accuracy.
"This type
of wearable device can give you a more comprehensive, more accurate picture of
what's going on in deep tissues and critical organs like the heart and the
brain, all from the surface of the skin," said Xu.
Today, that rate jumped to 76.3 per 100,000. That's a one day increase of 16%. At this rate, by next week, we'll be over 100 per 100,000 and bumped up to the Red Zone of "High Transmission."
We are still testing an a ridiculously low rate compared to earlier in the pandemic, so the actual infections are almost certainly much higher. Despite these alarming developments, our accidental Governor Dan McKee is closing six more COVID test sites, effective Saturday.
While McKee is "urging" people to mask up again, he once again balked at any thought of a return to mandates. He seems more afraid of upsetting his precious small businesses than he is of a resurgence of the pandemic - which will certainly not be a good thing for small business or anyone else.
The Conversation asked Peter Chin-Hong, a physician who specializes in infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco, to help put into context the science behind the changing messages.
Some conditions make a breakthrough infection more likely in a vaccinated person: more virus circulating in the community, lower vaccination rates and more highly transmissible variants.
If vaccinated people can get infected with the coronavirus, they can also spread it. Hence the CDC recommendation that vaccinated people remain masked in indoor public spaces to help stop viral transmission.
EDITOR'S NOTE: As of July 289, Rhode Island reached an infection rate of almost 66 75.3 per 100,000 well above the threshold for masking up. Our accidental Governor Dan McKee is still taking a wait-and-see attitude. - Will Collette
We didn’t know this, formally, however, until July 19, 2021, when a group of America’s top economists determined that the pandemic recession ended two months after it began, making it the shortest downturn on record.
This is in part because I recently asked my Boston University MBA students to make guesses, and we all wanted to know who was closest to the mark. While many of my students ended up nailing it, I was off by a month.
But why did it take over a year to learn the recession ended?
EDITOR'S NOTE: Rhode Island's numbers are pretty awful. See the data to the left. We have now gone up to the "SUBSTANTIAL" transmission level, one level below the highest.
in
parts of the country with low vaccination rates and growing concerns over the
highly transmissible Delta variant, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention on Tuesday announced new guidance saying people in the U.S. who
are fully vaccinated should wear face masks in indoor public places in certain
parts of the country and that indoor masks will be recommended in school
settings in the fall.
The CDC cited emerging information about the Delta variant's ability to spread among vaccinated people, with CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky saying that unlike earlier variants of the virus, a vaccinated person infected with the Delta variant has levels of the virus that are "indistinguishable" from those in unvaccinated people who are infected.
“This
new science is worrisome and unfortunately warrants an update to our
recommendation," Walensky said of
the new, unpublished data, which the CDC gathered in
recent days from 100 samples. "It is concerning enough that we feel
like we have to act."
In addition to
advising teachers, school staff, students, and visitors to schools to wear
masks inside regardless of vaccination status, the CDC recommended that
vaccinated people wear masks in indoor public spaces if they have young
children who can't be vaccinated or household members who are
immunocompromised or otherwise vulnerable.
The new
guidelines come two months after the CDC said that vaccinated people could go
without masks in both indoor and outdoor settings, launching an effort by the
Biden administration to incentivize vaccinations by suggesting they were the
key to "getting everything back to normal."
"The rule
is very simple: Get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do. It’s vax’ed or
masked," President Joe Biden said in
May during a celebratory event at the White House, the tone and message of
which drew alarm from some public health experts.
National Nurses
United—the country's largest nurses union—was among those that denounced
the CDC's claim that vaccinated people could safely go unmasked in all public
places, saying the
pandemic was "far from over" and noting that the same week the
earlier guidance was released, the CDC had reported a 16% increase in daily new
cases over the previous week.
On Tuesday, the Washington Postreported that
confirmed coronavirus infections have quadrupled nationwide since the beginning
of July. Officials recorded about 13,000 cases per day at the start of the
month and are now recording about 54,000 per day. Less than half of the U.S.
population has been fully vaccinated.
The CDC's new
guidance came a day after officials in New York City and California announced that
public employees will be required to be vaccinated or undergo weekly testing;
California's mandate applies to public- and private-sector healthcare workers
as well.
The White House
also said Monday
that it will continue restricting the entry of travelers from Europe, while the
CDC urged Americans to avoid traveling to Spain and Portugal, which have seen
Covid-19 cases rise by 74% and 18%, respectively, in the last two weeks.
The CDC's new
guidance was applauded Tuesday by public health experts, some of whom had
expressed concern about the loosening of guidelines in May.
"About damn
time," Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist at the Federation of American
Scientists, tweeted,
adding: "Glad [the CDC] reversed course. But I worry it might be
harder for compliance now than if we kept masks in place in May."
Jeremy Faust, an
emergency physician in Boston, rejected some news outlets' reporting that the
CDC had "backtracked" on its earlier guidance, in which unvaccinated
people were advised to continue masking in public settings.
The call for people to continue masking regardless of vaccination status
"is key," said CNN medical analyst Leana Wen,
"as [the] honor system does not work."
Luis Schang, a
virologist at Cornell University, emphasized that despite the new data about
the Delta variant's viral load, vaccines are still shown to be effective at
preventing the worst outcomes of the disease and that vaccination rates are
rising.
"It's not a
permanent thing. That's an important thing to highlight," Schang told the Post. "This is not
something we have to do for years. This is weeks, perhaps a couple of
months."
Walensky also
said the mask guidance is meant to be a "temporary measure."
"What we
really need to do to drive down these transmissions in the areas of high
transmission is to get more and more people vaccinated and in the meantime, to
use masks," the CDC director said.
An interactive map
from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed how smoke from
the wildfires out west were being carried across the continental US by winds
and the jet stream.
Around
Boston, people reported not only seeing a film of smoke in the skies, but also
smelling the scent of wood burning. Firefighters across the state fielded calls
from concerned residents who worried that a fire was burning nearby. This is
the second time in the last two weeks that smoke from the western forest fires
has been carried to New England—but the smoke was markedly thicker and more
pungent this time around.
With
scientists predicting that our climate will continue to get hotter and drier,
exacerbating normal patterns of forest fires, The Brink reached
out to Boston University environmental earth scientist Mark
Friedl for help understanding what these changes mean for our
planet and for human health.
Friedl, an expert in using NASA satellite imaging
to interpret large-scale environmental trends, recently published new research
findings indicating that forest fires in Earth’s northernmost forests could
accelerate climate change—potentially locking the planet in a
feedback loop where drier climate causes more fires and those fires, in turn,
speed up global warming.
“Fires are intensifying, and when forests burn, carbon
is released into the atmosphere,” Friedl says about those findings.
My prepandemic summers were always packed with travel – trips to Europe for work and play, and, most recently, a road trip across the American West.
At the end of a sweltering day of activities, I’d routinely wind down with some social drinking.
In recent years, though, I started to notice a shift. Beer lists had grown to include more and more low-alcohol options.
Whether I was in Braunschweig, Germany, a suburb of Salt Lake City, or at home in Central Texas, I found myself no longer forced to choose between the likes of Stella Artois or Miller Lite if I wanted something that wouldn’t put me under the table.
Now I could expect to find a bevy of local or national options with an alcohol by volume, or ABV, in the 4% to 5% range – below the 5.9% average of a craft beer and well below the 7% India pale ales that had been flooding the market.
I even started seeing more nonalcoholic beers like Heineken 0.0, which was first released in Europe in 2017 and then in the U.S. in 2019.
It seemed to me that low- and no-alcohol beers were becoming much more popular, but I wasn’t sure. So like a good scholar, I decided to look to the data to find an answer.
In a recent study I conducted with my colleagues at Texas State University, we looked at industry literature and social media mentions, popular media articles and changes to alcohol regulations. We found that there is, in fact, a growing interest in consuming – and improved technology for producing – beer with less alcohol.
New research has found that some men who have had COVID-19 might experience unwanted sexual side effects. tuaindeed/iStock via Getty Images
Contrary to myths circulating on social media, COVID-19 vaccines do not cause erectile dysfunction and male infertility.
What is true: SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, poses a risk for both disorders.
Until now, little research has been done on how the virus or the vaccines affect the male reproductive system.
But recent investigations by physicians and researchers here at the University of Miami have shed new light on these questions.
The team, which includes me, has discovered potentially far-reaching implications for men of all ages – including younger and middle-aged men who want to have children.
Resistance
actually started in Connecticut. Charlestown joined in late because the ruling
Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party) ignored prior notices – as then
Council President Tom Gentz put it
“Who has time to wade through that?”
However
much we hated that plan, from the start, it had almost
zero chance
of actually being carried out since (a) Donald Trump had not approved it and
(b) was unlikely to support any
project that helped northeastern Blue states that voted against him in 2016,
plus (c) the Republican-controlled Congress didn’t fund the plan.
AMTRAK
beat a retreat claiming they needed to re-think the project and the so-called “Old
Saybrook-Kenyon Bypass,” the one that would have run through us, was taken off
the table in a BINDING Record of Decision.
But
now it’s 2021. Trump is gone. Democrats control the Congress. President Joe
Biden LOVES trains and a major infrastructure project like upgrading rail service
along the Northeast Corridor makes more sense than ever for jobs and for its
very positive carbon footprint.
So
naturally, Charlestown’s Planning Commissar Ruth Platner is sounding the alarm:
“THEY’RE BACK?” as she put it as if AMTRAK bulldozers were about to break
ground for the decisively defeated Old Saybrook-Kenyon Bypass. You can read her
rants HERE and HERE.
However,
there is NO EVIDENCE that AMTRAK plans to resurrect the Old Saybrook-Kenyon
Bypass. According to Ruth’s only
source, the on-line Connecticut
Examiner,
AMTRAK wants to connect Providence to Hartford with high-speed rail.
That's true, but not the way Ruth thinks it is. In fact, AMTRAK already has a
route to make the high-speed rail connection between Hartford and Providence
that doesn’t come anywhere near Charlestown, called North Atlantic
Rail.
Here’s the map:
Read
more about this plan in EcoRI’s February 5, 2021 article HERE noting explicitly that this plan doesn't come anywhere close to Charlestown.
But
Ruth is shook up over another map (BELOW) that ran with the Connecticut
Examiner article.
That map shows the general location of the gap between New Haven and Providence but DOES
NOT indicate any threat to Charlestown.
I
read that same article even before Ruth started ranting about it and had
entirely different takeaways.
CT Examiner graphic
For
example, the article
accurately notes
that AMTRAK “eventually dropped the Kenyon to Old
Saybrook Bypass, and the widening of the rail corridor near Guilford from a
binding record of decision released on July 12, 2017.”Note the term “binding.”
Nothing in the article says or implies that
AMTRAK intends to set aside that BINDING decision, but that’s not what Ruth Platner would have you
believe.
In
fact, the
article largely focuses on AMTRAK’s announced plans to
upgrade the other sections of the Northeast Corridor especially in Hartford.
“At the time, Rebecca Reyes-Alicia, who managed the federal
project for FRA, told Ana
Radelat, a reporter for CT Mirror, “there was no consensus” for the
proposed bypass through southeastern Connecticut. Reyes-Alicea said there would
be instead a later “healthy” process for finalizing a route between New Haven
and Providence. That process would still require any solution to meet the
overall goals for service and time savings between Providence and New Haven and
would consider on-corridor and off-corridor solutions.”
But apparently Ruth missed the date of the
article and thought this was AMTRAK’s current
plan so she sounded the alarm thinking there is an imminent threat – which
there is not.
The article only mentions one new action that may
have some bearing on us and that’s “two
studies: a ‘New Haven to Providence Capacity Planning Study,’ and a ‘New Haven
to New Rochelle NEC Capacity and Trip Time Planning Study’ at some
unspecified time. A "capacity planning study" does not mean we need to grab the pitchforks and picket signs.
Note that the North Atlantic Rail plan (map
above) covers high-speed rail service between New Haven, Hartford and
Providence coming nowhere near us.
Why is Ruth trying to start a panic?
One
theory is that Ruth is using the CCA Party’s tried-and-true technique of
creating boogeymen to scare Charlestown voters into believing that only the CCA
can save Charlestown from Armageddon.
Or
perhaps she’s trying to skew people’s answers to the survey
currently in the hands of every Charlestown household. For the most
part, that survey tests how much residents approve of the status quo and how
much they hate a long, long list of threats. REMINDER: please fill your survey
and send it in.
Whether
Ruth is playing the long con or just going for a cheap thrill, it does seem
like we will be hearing a lot more about some of threats the CCA wants us all
to fear.
That battle was before my 2002 arrival as a Charlestown resident,
but I’ve talked to veterans of that fight who still remember the town’s unity
of purpose. Instead of a power plant, the Navy base became Ninigret Park and
the Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge.
It's always something
It’s
good to remember history – this 50 year old campaign was one for the ages. The
CCA concedes that “Nuclear power seems highly
unlikely to be proposed again for coastal Charlestown” but “History is more likely to
be repeated if it is allowed to be forgotten.”
For
more than a decade, Charlestown politics have been fueled by fear and bullshit.
If it’s not a stampeding herd of developers, it’s AMTRAK. If not AMTRAK, it’s
nukes or the Indians or chain stores or wind turbines or shiny lights or
improperly trimmed shrubbery.
Or
it’s getting dates wrong and mistaking 2017 for 2021.
