Science

AG Continues To Take Comments on Caritas Christi – Cerberus Sale

Even after completing six public hearings – including one in Methuen in the the Merrimack Valley – AG Martha Coakley will continue to accept comments from the public. Jill Butterworth, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office said that she could not comment on the letter sent by the Healthcare Access…

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From City Manager’s Blog: Historic District Energy Grants

September 30 is the deadline to apply for green energy grants and loans to retrofit buildings in the downtown historic district. This money is available thanks to a $5 million “stimulus fund” (Recovery Act) federal grant announced by US Rep. Tsongas, Sen. Kerry, and City leaders a few months ago. Read about the program and application…

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The Pace of Climate Change

The above graph is a screenshot taken from An Inconvenient Truth. There are many versions of this graph available; I chose this one because the image in the movie was on such a large scale that the last few decades are actually visible. The graph shows temperatures and concentrations of…

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Caritas to Cerberus: AG Coakley Needs to Take the Long View

With one of the six Caritas Christi Health Care facilities – Holy Family Hospital in Methuen – such an important Merrimack Valley institution, I’ve posted frequently about the role of Attorney General Coakley in the proposed purchase by Cerberus Capital Management – a New York private equity firm Cerberus. The editorial…

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Climate Forcings

In my previous post, I discussed the relationship between the orbit of the Earth around the Sun and fluctuations between periods of climate warming and cooling. In this post I’d like to explain how that works. I already pointed out that the Earth is currently defying all previous behavior by…

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How Natural Climate Change Occurs

It is no secret that there is a massive disconnect between what the scientific community understands about climate change and what the general public understands. This has allowed our elected officials and those running for office (most recently the Republican candidate for Senate in Wisconsin) to get away with blatantly…

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High Praise for Mass. in Healthy Eating Story (NYT)

An apple a day is the right thing. An apple plus a carrot is even better. Writing in the NYTimes, Natasha Singer looks into “prescription produce” and the sickness prevention benefits of real food, i.e., fruit and vegetables. Massachusetts public policy gets high praise in this article. Lowell and the surrounding towns offer farmers’…

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What is Natural Selection?

Natural selection was Darwin’s key insight, the idea that truly made him famous. The idea of evolution existed before he was born, but there was no credible mechanism. Darwin, and Alfred Russell Wallace, uncovered that mechanism. Natural selection has been defined as “the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators.” Before…

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