An archive of the South African PCFormat forums.
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And I thought they were fantasy?rustypup wrote:other hobgoblins
www.telegraph.co.uk wrote:L'Aquila earthquake scientists sentenced to six years in jail
A group of scientists are facing six years in jail for manslaughter after providing “an incomplete, inept, unsuitable and criminally mistaken” assessment of risks posed by the devastating L’Aquila earthquake that killed more than 300 people.
The landmark decision on Monday was welcomed by victims and their families but immediately prompted uproar from the scientific community, which contends that there is no reliable way of predicting earthquakes.
The six scientists and a former government official were all members of the Major Risks Committee which met in the central Italian city on March 31, 2009, after several small tremors had been recorded in the region. At the time, they ruled that it was impossible to determine whether the tremors would be followed by a large quake, in a judgment which reassured residents. One of the group famously advised them to relax with a glass of wine. Just six days later, a 6.3 magnitude quake devastated L’Aquila.
On Monday, Judge Marco Billi announced the manslaughter sentence to a packed courtroom in a temporary building erected to hear the case in the still devastated city. He also ruled that the defendants should pay 7.8 million euros (£6.4 millions) in damages, with two million euros to be paid immediately.
The sentencing provoked strong criticism from the scientific community.
Richard Walters of Oxford University’s Department of Earth Sciences, said he was “saddened” about the verdict, warning that it set a “dangerous precedent”.
“The issue here is about miscommunication of science, and we should not be putting responsible scientists who gave measured, scientifically accurate information in prison. This sets a very dangerous precedent and I fear it will discourage other scientists from offering their advice on natural hazards and trying to help society in this way.”
Prof Malcolm Sperrin, Director of Medical Physics, Royal Berkshire Hospital, said: “If the scientific community is to be penalised for making predictions that turn out to be incorrect, or for not accurately predicting an event that subsequently occurs, then scientific endeavour will be restricted to certainties only and the benefits that are associated with findings from medicine to physics will be stalled.”
Prosecutor Fabio Picuti had sought four-year terms for each of the defendants accusing them of failing to alert the population of the historic Medieval town only days before quake struck on April 6. Judge Billi’s reason for the longer sentence imposed will be disclosed at a later date.
In his summing up earlier on Monday, Mr Picuti told the court that the defendants had provided “an incomplete, inept, unsuitable and criminally mistaken” analysis which gave the residents of L’Aquila a false sense of security.
He compared them to the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which came under fire for failing to assess the risks before Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans in 2005.
Speaking after the sentencing, Enzi Boschi, the former president of Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, who was among the seven found guilty, said he was “disappointed and devastated”.
“I thought I would be cleared. I still don’t understand of what I am accused,” he said.
Defence lawyers condemned the sentence and pledged to appeal it - under the Italian system, the seven will remain free until they have exhausted two chances to appeal.
Marcello Petrelli who represented Franco Barberi, professor of volcanology and a former deputy Civil Protection minister, said the sentence was “incredible and incomprehensible”.
But family members of some of those killed in the earthquake said the victims had won the case with the help of “heavenly” intervention.
“Between the objections and the sentence I went to the cemetery to see my nephew, I felt like saying that the accused had a large stable of lawyers but this time my 'celestial lawyer’ has won,” said Antonietta Centofanti, aunt of Davide who was killed in the university dormitory on the night of the quake.
After the main earthquake struck, L’Aquila and the surrounding area was shaken by another 250 powerful aftershocks within 48 hours.
The quake caused damage worth an estimated 10 billion euros (£8 billion), leaving large areas of the city abandoned even today and the community still devastated by the tragedy.
A pioneering team from IBM in Zurich has published single-molecule images so detailed that the type of atomic bonds between their atoms can be discerned.
If you follow the link and read further they are thinking that these bacteria feed off of carbon compounds. So ... will they grow on our excess carbon in the atmosphere or will they die out? Effects on global warming?Surprised Scientists Find Lifeforms Six Miles Above Earth’s Surface
Jesus Diaz
For the first time, scientists have found lifeforms where nobody thought it was possible: floating in the troposphere, the slice of the atmosphere approximately four to six miles (eight to 15 kilometers) above Earth's surface. And not just a tiny few, but lot: 20% of every particle in that atmospheric layer are living organisms.
This has profound implications for our understanding of weather, the spread of disease, and life on other planets.
...
you are dead to meSykomantiS wrote:That last one about fracking was lost upon me.
Net nie dit nie!rustypup wrote:you are dead to meSykomantiS wrote:That last one about fracking was lost upon me.
people must be really stupid if I look at the resultsNever mind that all the questions were easily Googlable...rustypup wrote: <note: this data is over a tiny sample of adults from what appears to be the 'bible belt' - because if this were a genuinely indicative sample of the american populace, we're all dead...>
I was more thinking about combustion. We'd be a pile of smouldering ashes if the oxygen level was that highrustypup wrote:
only 20% of the sampled populace was aware that nitrogen is the most prevalent gas in our atmosphere... how does anyone make it out of primary education without knowing this?
by inference, 80% of them are unaware of how toxic oxygen can be...
. CapNemo wrote:13
no... KK got it wrong, but the results indicate that this may be a woman thing, hence the "good company"KALSTER wrote:you and KK got it wrong? What did you answer and why?
Haha!rustypup wrote:no... KK got it wrong, but the results indicate that this may be a woman thing, hence the "good company"KALSTER wrote:you and KK got it wrong? What did you answer and why?