Although the immediate side effects of antimalarial drugs are widely recognized, few studies were designed specifically to examine health problems that might occur or persist months or years after people stopped taking them.

Today the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released its review of the National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) draft monograph Systematic Review of Fluoride Exposure and Neurodevelopmental and Cognitive Health Effects.

Commercial sea fishing has been taking place for centuries. The first analysis of historic data from the UK has indicated that, over the past 118 years, the commercial productivity of UK fisheries has decreased by 94 per cent.

A recent study has demonstrated that it is possible to identify which human pressures, such as fisheries and environmental pollution, are causing changes in Marine and Coastal by combining the trends in different indicators. This approach can be used as a tool for integrated ecosystem assessment and management.

We reported last week that layoffs were coming soon to Warner Brothers, but how many positions will be cut is still unknown.  

A spokesman for Warner Brothers Entertainment, Paul McGuire, told KPCC there's no exact number yet. "There is no headcount reduction target, but there is a substantial financial target," Maguire said. 

“This is a budget issue, not a head count issue,” Dee Dee Myers, Warner Brothers Vice President of Corporation Communications told Variety.  The trade publication reports that Warner Brothers is expected to eliminate as many as 1,000 positions worldwide - or about 10 percent of its workforce:

Senior managers are currently assessing their businesses to come up with ways to trim overhead. Only at the end of that process will an exact reduction figure be known. It could be somewhat lower than the current numbers being speculated, but cuts are expected to be substantial.  

News of coming layoffs became public two weeks ago, when KPCC and other media outlets obtained an internal memo written by Warner Bros. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Kevin Tsujihara.   

"It pains me to say this, positions will be eliminated—at every level—across the Studio," Tsujihara wrote in the memo. 

Morningstar Analyst Neil Macker told KPCC that management at Warner Brothers is trying to protect the company from another takeover play by Rupert Murdoch.  In July, Murdoch offered to buy parent company Time Warner for $80 billion. He withdrew the offer in August. 

An unknown threat actor is exploiting vulnerabilities in plugins for which patches have been available for months, or even years

The post Almost a million WordPress websites targeted in massive campaign appeared first on WeLiveSecurity

Increasing noise levels are a global environmental concern, and have been linked to important health issues, such as heart disease and cognitive development. New Danish research has now shown that it is also associated with an increased risk of diabetes.

The world’s marine ecosystems are at risk of sudden and damaging changes. The authors of a recent study say that co-ordinated management of the many drivers of marine changes, such as overfishing and pollution, is needed across international, national and local scales to help avoid the ‘regime shifts’ that affect ecosystem services and human wellbeing.

Using high-strength concrete in construction could help to reduce its impact on the environment, according to a study by French researchers. The researchers compared the environmental impacts of bridges built from ordinary and high-strength concrete and found that the high-strength solution had a lower impact on the environment overall.

A new concrete-reinforcement system, used by the LIFE INSU-SHELL1 project, replaces steel rods with non-corrosive textile structures to reduce the amount of concrete needed in construction. This nearly halves the global warming potential of traditional steel-reinforced concrete which is the largest producer of CO2 emissions in the building industry.

A test that can detect Parkinson's disease in the early stages of the illness has moved a step closer.

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Increasing noise levels are a global environmental concern, and have been linked to important health issues, such as heart disease and cognitive development. New Danish research has now shown that it is also associated with an increased risk of diabetes.

Through a combination of human activities and climate change, the European environment is dehydrated. This thematic issue explores potential water management measures aimed at enhancing and safeguarding the water storage potential of Europe's ecosystems and aquifers.

What do you think of Science for Environment Policy? Tell us your thoughts with our online survey. The survey aims to assess how the service has diversified and responded to audience needs. Many thanks for your valuable feedback.

Increasing noise levels are a global environmental concern, and have been linked to important health issues, such as heart disease and cognitive development. New Danish research has now shown that it is also associated with an increased risk of diabetes.

Higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and temperatures under climate change are likely to increase the rate of corrosive damage in reinforced concrete structures, according to a recent study. This could result in costly repairs in the future, unless structures are suitably adapted.

When assessing the environmental impacts of new ‘green’ concretes, care should be taken to ensure that a range of impacts are considered, such as ecosystem damage and water depletion, rather than a sole focus on CO2 emissions, a recent study concludes. It demonstrates that cement incorporating industrial by-products performs substantially better than Portland cement when rated across several classifications of environmental impact.

Concrete and asphalt's environmental impact could be reduced by over a third through changes to manufacturing processes and the use of alternative raw materials, according to research. A scenario study based on life cycle analysis has indicated that using alternative types of cement in concrete and producing asphalt at lower temperatures could substantially improve the green credentials of these two common building materials.

Better methods are needed to monitor underwater gas leaks. A new study outlines a technique that uses sound to detect bubbles of escaped gas and could help produce more accurate measurements of gas leakage rates from carbon capture and storage (CCS) sites, pipelines and natural leakage sites.

Constructed wetlands can effectively remove veterinary drugs from wastewater, preventing contamination of the environment, research suggests. A recent study has demonstrated that laboratory-scale constructed wetlands were able to remove between 94 and 98% of two commonly used antibiotics from pig farm wastewater.

A new review examines the potential uses and scientific, technical and manufacturing problems facing ‘van der Waals heterostructures’ - an emerging science which uses building block-like nanomaterials. Van der Waals heterostructures are nanomaterials built by layering different materials, each one atom thick, on top of each other, to create materials with unique properties and uses.

In a previous blog post, Notifications from MATLAB, I showed how Amazon's Notification system (AWS SNS) can be used from MATLAB service can be used to easily send information between endpoints in a distributed system, be they applications or people.... read more >>

Wenz, John, author

The announcement of a new no-take fishing zone in the Pacific led to a 130% increase in fishing activity ahead of its implementation, satellite data reveal. Although fishing activity dropped to zero once the marine protected area (MPA) came into effect just over a year later, the study warns that the pre-emptive short-term surge in fishing could have caused long-term ecological damage.

A new study has concluded that the benefits of carbon capture and storage (CCS) to human health and ecosystems from reduced climate change related impacts considerably outweigh any negative impacts from using the technology in power plants. However, CCS has a large impact on the depletion of natural resources.

Algal blooms in inland and marine waters could be detected and monitored more accurately in future, thanks to a new assessment method. Scientists have developed a new algorithm for sensors which identify emerging blooms of cyanobacteria based on the behaviour of light reflected by the algae’s pigment. Importantly, the algorithm may reduce uncertainty in estimations of algal concentrations by distinguishing between two different types of pigment.

Researchers have developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based system to detect Twitter bots after identifying differences in their short-term behaviour from humans on the social media platform.

Cybercriminals are unleashing a surprisingly high volume of new threats in this short period of time to take advantage of inadvertent security gaps as organizations are in a rush to ensure business continuity.

• A 2.5% salary increase is given upon successful completion of jail school.
• Detention Officers with advanced degrees will receive extra pay based on highest degree obtained:  Associates ($.25 per hour), Bachelors ($.50 per hour), Masters ($.75 per hour). 
• Detention Officers who possess a Law Enforcement Intermediate Certificate will receive an additional $.25 per hour.
• Detention Officers who possess a Law Enforcement Advanced Certificate will receive an additional $.50 per hour. 
• A salary increase is given annually upon a successful performance review (dependent upon budget availability).
• Bilingual extra duty pay is provided upon successful completion of testing (dependent upon budget availability).

• Detention Officers work 12.25 hour shifts, and get a three-day weekend off every other weekend (Fri-Sun), working 14 days out of a 28 day pay period.   
• Applicants must be available to work day and night shifts. 
• Pay is bi-monthly (every 14 days).
• Excellent benefits are offered, including competitive pay, health insurance, dental insurance, and up to a 2% 401K match. 
• Interview dates:  June 3 and 4, 2020 (Save these dates. Applicants chosen to interview will be contacted approximately one week before interview date to schedule interview.) 
• To be considered complete the on line Catawba County application in entirety.

Pollination of intensively farmed, flowering crops could affect the pollination of wild plants in neighbouring fields, according to a study by German researchers. In their one-year study, they found fewer bees visited wild plants that are close to oilseed rape fields, although the longer-term picture is less clear. The researchers warn that increasing cultivation of biofuel crops could possibly reduce wild flower populations.

Crayfish plague, spread by invasive North American crayfish, is currently devastating native European populations. However, while the disease is commonly diagnosed on the basis of diseased animals, free-living infective spores can contaminate water bodies. In the first study to test detection techniques for this disease in natural waterways, researchers found that invasive signal crayfish release low levels of plague spores, allowing it to spread undetected.

Citizen scientists are increasingly playing an important role in monitoring environmental conditions around the world. There have been concerns, however, that the quality of volunteer data might not match the reliability of data collected by professional scientists. A new study has found that both citizen scientists and professional scientists were able to identify widespread decreases in the cover of live corals and increases in rubble and sand, during two long-term monitoring programmes of coral reefs. These results show that volunteers can indeed play a meaningful role in the conservation of these reefs, say the authors of this study.

Scientists have developed a new way of monitoring Ponto-Caspian gobies, a group of widely invasive fish species, by detecting traces of the fishes’ DNA in river water. They say, in a recent research paper, that it offers a quicker, easier and cheaper way of monitoring the fish than conventional catching or sighting methods.

Rare earth elements (REEs) are used increasingly often in innovative technologies, causing these elements to enter the natural environment. They can be sourced via deep-sea mining, raising concerns about marine exposure to mining processes and waste products. This study examined how two REEs, lanthanum and yttrium, affected and stressed marine ecosystems, using young marine mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis) as indicators of water quality. The researchers determine a parameter known as the ‘predicted no effect concentration’ (PNEC) for La and Y — the maximum environmental level of each of the two elements at which no effect is seen on the most sensitive organisms and which is, therefore, deemed safe for the environment.

A novel approach for identifying and isolating anthropogenic – including microplastic – particles in fish stomachs has been devised by researchers in Belgium. The new method may enable scientists and policymakers to better assess the presence, quantity and composition of particles ingested by marine life, and improve understanding of the environmental effects of marine plastic pollution.

Combinations of antibiotics used in veterinary medicine could harm the growth of algal communities when they pass into water bodies from treated livestock, according to recent European research. Algae play vital roles in ecosystems by cycling nutrients and producing energy from photosynthesis; veterinary use of antibiotics should, therefore, be monitored in the environment, including for any biological impacts on algal species, the study recommends.

The presence of disinfection by-products (DBPs) in drinking water is an emerging health concern. DBPs come in many classes and are chemically diverse, making them challenging to monitor. Swedish researchers have evaluated a new method for the simultaneous determination of a broader range of DBPs than typically possible using other available techniques. The method uses gas chromatography (a laboratory technique that separates and analyses vaporisable compounds in a mixture), together with a halogen-specific detector (XSD). Having been tested in real water samples from two municipal waterworks in Sweden, the method has been optimised for the simultaneous determination of a wide range of neutral DBPs.

High levels of ammonia were observed at a Natura 2000 site nearly three kilometres upwind from an intensive poultry farm in a recent study. While downwind effects of ammonia emissions are to be expected, this study suggests that ammonia emissions could be a significant source of nitrogen pollution even upwind from the source.