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WALLULA, Walla Walla County — After nearly a decade of preparation, the experiment that started last week near the banks of the Columbia River seems almost anti-climactic. Four cylindrical tanks, each containing about 40 tons of carbon dioxide, sit tethered by pipes and tubes to a hole in the ground. There’s a faint hum of machinery as a pump forces the liquefied gas down the well and into rocks more than half a mile below the surface. The setup doesn’t look like much, conceded project leader Peter McGrail, of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). But it represents the first crack at finding out whether the vast basalt deposits of the Columbia Basin might someday serve as a geologic vault to lock up greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other industrial sources. “This is the only one in the world,” McGrail said earlier this week at the experiment site. “Nobody else has injected (liquefied) CO2 into basalt.” The pumping started July 17 and will continu...

The humongous electromagnet has finally reached its destination after travelling through water and roads, throwing a spectacular show for viewers. The magnet garnered itself a lot of fan following on Twitter (#bigmove) covering a safe 3,200 mile journey. The 50-foot-wide, 15-ton electromagnet became a sensation while making a move from the national laboratory in Brookhaven, New York to Fermilab in Batavia, Ill, Friday night. The giant magnet's arrival was welcomed by the new home crowd. A 15-hour drive-down from New York to Illinois, took a month for the giant magnet, considering the safety of the $30 million gadget. It traveled down the East Coast, through the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, by ship. It was then towed into a custom-made 16-axel flatbed truck, which was designed to travel at an average speed of 10 miles per hour, to cover its final leg of the journey. The truck displayed a huge board "Driving discovery in particle phy...

Frogs living in remote mountain ponds in the Sierra Nevada are ingesting pesticides used to grow crops 50 to 100 miles away in California’s Central Valley, according to a study by government scientists. Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey identified 10 distinct chemicals in the frogs’ tissues, including residues of DDT, an insecticide that’s been banned for more than 40 years. No Kermit, it’s not easy being green. While the new study, published Thursday in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, found only trace amounts of the agricultural chemicals, researchers say that’s almost beside the point: The mere fact that the pesticides had made their way to distant sites in national parks and other public lands was their primary concern. Amphibians are considered excellent indicators of ecosystem health due to their sensitivity to environmental change. And while they’re not as charismatic as polar bears,“they are a part of the food web,” said study leader Kelly Smalling ...

Global warming has been bantered about for years. Is it happening? Is it a myth? The pros and cons have been heard around the world and often attempt to cancel each other out. However, the North Pole Environmental Observatory has released photos of what was once the frozen North Pole–only it’s now a lake. The North Pole Environmental Observatory has been around since the year 2000. It is funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and its purpose is to monitor the Arctic sea ice. The lake began forming on July 13 after a month of temperatures rising one to three degrees Celsius above normal. Ice still separates the lake from the Arctic Ocean, but as that frozen layer keeps melting, the lake will deepen. Scientists have been monitoring the melting ice during recent years. It freezes over after the summer months, but melts again the next year. The melting has opened up the Northwest Passage for shipping as well as oil and gas exploration. Unfortunately for the polar b...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - NASA is getting an unprecedented close-up look at the sun, thanks to a new telescope. NASA's IRIS spacecraft, launched just a month ago, already is providing detailed pictures of the sun. The telescope's door opened last week, and it began observing the lower solar atmospheres in never-before-seen detail. The early results were announced Thursday and hailed by the research team as exciting. NASA's science mission directorate chief, former astronaut John Grunsfeld, says it's "a grand opening of a new era in solar physics." IRIS is short for Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph. It will continue its mission for the next two years. Scientists say the observations will help shed light on the sun's impact on Earth. ___ Online: NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/iris Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/science/20130725_ap_bd616b58ba8f44c6a15556cc79f145bd.html#rBk7RS44tpHKiz3P.99

European Union and Chinese negotiators reached an agreement to curb EU imports of solar panels from China in exchange for exempting the shipments from punitive tariffs. The accord would set a minimum price for imports of the renewable-energy technology from China. In return, Chinese manufacturers would be spared EU levies meant to counter below-cost sales, a practice known as dumping . The EU import taxes target more than 100 Chinese companies including Yingli Green Energy Holding Co., Wuxi Suntech Power Co. and Changzhou Trina Solar Energy Co. “We found an amicable solution in the EU-China solar-panels case that will lead to a new market equilibrium at sustainable prices,” European Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said in a statement yesterday in Brussels. He didn’t disclose China’s minimum-price offer, which must be accepted by the full European Commission, or indicate whether the accord includes a limit on the volume of imports from China. The goal is to limit Chinese comp...

For the followup to his first novel ( Letter to My Daughter ), author George Bishop sets The Night of the Comet in 1973 Terrebonne, La. — a fictitious small town deep in Cajun Country. Bishop, who lives in New Orleans, borrowed memories from his childhood in Jackson, La., to populate the much more exotic Terrebonne. “A couple of gas stations, a handful of shops, two schools and a water tower ... I could circumnavigate my whole world in a half hour on my bike. Those were the kind of things I borrowed for my novel,” Bishop said in press material. The buildup for the arrival of the Comet Kohoutek, the so-called “comet of the century,” has begun and our narrator, 14-year-old Alan Broussard Jr., receives a telescope as a birthday gift from his father, the high school science teacher who is eager to share his astral obsession — and maybe make a connection — with his son. Meanwhile, Junior would rather spy on the new girl across the bayou than train his telescope to the skies. Part c...

False memories have been implanted into mice, scientists say. A team was able to make the mice wrongly associate a benign environment with a previous unpleasant experience from different surroundings. The researchers conditioned a network of neurons to respond to light, making the mice recall the unpleasant environment. Reporting in Science , they say it could one day shed light into how false memories occur in humans. The brains of genetically engineered mice were implanted with optic fibres in order to deliver pulses of light to their brain. Known as optogenetics, this technique is able to make individual neurons respond to light. Unreliable memory Just like in mice, our memories are stored in collections of cells, and when events are recalled we reconstruct parts of these cells - almost like re-assembling small pieces of a puzzle. It has been well documented that human memory is highly unreliable, first highlighted by a study on eyewitness testimonies ...

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann ’s problems with the House ethics committee are not going away yet. On Friday, the chair and ranking member of the committee, a Democrat and a Republican, announced that a review of the congresswoman’s case will be extended another 45 days, meaning that the earliest a decision can be expected is on Sept. 11. The ethics committee extension is routine, but it also signifies the first public acknowledgment by any federal entity of the multiple allegations of campaign finance or ethical improprieties by Bachmann’s 2012 presidential campaign. The case was referred to the committee on June 13 by the independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), which has interviewed former Bachmann staffers about allegations of improper payments and the use of campaign staffers to promote her book, “Core of Conviction.” Bachmann’s attorneys have denied any wrongdoing on her part. Bachmann recently announced she would not seek re-election. The ethics panel face...

When the Patriot Act was last reauthorized, I stood on the floor of the United States Senate and said, “I want to deliver a warning this afternoon. When the American people find out how their government has interpreted the Patriot Act, they are going to be stunned and they are going to be angry.” From my position on the Senate Intelligence Committee, I had seen government activities conducted under the umbrella of the Patriot Act that I knew would astonish most Americans. At the time, Senate rules about classified information barred me from giving any specifics of what I’d seen except to describe it as “secret law”—a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act, issued by a secret court, that authorizes secret surveillance programs; programs that I and colleagues think go far beyond the intent of the statute. If that is not enough to give you pause, then consider that not only were the existence of and the legal justification for these programs kept completely secret from the Ame...

BOSTON (AP) — Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, was discharged from a Boston hospital Saturday, just under three weeks after she suffered a seizure at their Nantucket home, a State Department spokesman said. Heinz Kerry, 74, is expected to make a full recovery from the July 7 seizure following additional outpatient treatment, spokesman Glen Johnson said. "I'm extremely grateful for the quality of care Teresa received," Kerry said in the statement. "I've always known Massachusetts is blessed to have some of the greatest health care in the world, but we've just lived it, and are grateful to all." Heinz Kerry thanked her doctors and caregivers. "They are the kindest people, who love what they do and do it superbly well," she said. Kerry praised the State Department Diplomatic Security Service members who first responded when his wife fell ill. Heinz Kerry was treated at a Nantucket hospital and another ...

PIERMONT, N.Y. — A deadly nighttime speedboat crash on the Hudson River hurled a bride-to-be and her fiance’s best man into the water and left the groom and three others injured, including a friend charged with vehicular manslaughter on Saturday, just two weeks before the couple was to exchange their vows. Six friends were on board the boat Friday night when it struck a barge near the Tappan Zee Bridge, sending Lindsey Stewart and Mark Lennon, both 30, into the water and injuring the other four, including groom-to-be Brian Bond, officials said. A body matching Stewart’s description was recovered Saturday while Lennon is presumed dead, Rockland County Sheriff’s Department Chief William Barbera said. The search for Lennon’s body will resume Sunday. “The search has been suspended this evening and the tides have a lot to do with that,” Barbera said. “We’ll start again first thing in the morning.” Authorities charged the boat’s operator, Jojo John, 35, of Nyack, with ve...

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TV Guide — Who is Red Reddington? That's the question NBC's new fall thriller The Blacklist poses. In order to play the series' central mystery man, veteran actor James Spader felt it was necessary to reset his image, starting with shaving his usual full head of hair. "Actors are burdened with everything else they've done before that," he said at the Television Critics Association fall previews on Saturday. "I thought it would be nice to take off my hat [in the pilot] and it's a completely different person." Press Tour: Get the latest NBC news On the show, Reddington is a notorious wanted criminal who surrenders himself to the FBI but stays out of jail by tipping them off about a list of uber criminals that only he can help the Bureau capture. The caveat? He only wants to speak to rookie profiler Elizabeth Keen ( Megan Boone ). As for comparisons between Red and Elizabeth's relationship and that of Silence of th...

Kidd Kraddick, the likable Dallas radio personality whose popularity expanded nationwide when his morning show was syndicated, died on Saturday at the age of 53. He passed away in New Orleans at a fundraising event for his Kidd's Kids charity organization at Timberlane County Club in Gretna, Louisiana. Local law enforcement confirmed that Kraddick was taken to West Jefferson Medical Center in New Orleans on Saturday. A staple of North Texas radio since 1984, he broadcast his nationally syndicated "Kidd Kraddick in the Morning" radio show from a studio at Las Colinas. It aired locally on KISS-FM 106.1. "All of us at KISS-FM, Clear Channel Dallas, YEA Networks and the Kidd Kraddick in the Morning crew are heartbroken over the loss of our dear friend and leader," a statement from Clear Channel Dallas said late Saturday night. "He died doing what he loved, and his final day was spent selflessly focused on those special children that meant the worl...