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POPSPledge to give ten cans of food to your local food bank or dropoff point If this is a no-no please holler at me, I will remove. It is a pledge I made asking people to pledge to give ten cans of food and I will do the same. I have a goal of 100 people. It's easy. No money involved to pledge, just say you will take food to your local food bank. Easy. Times are hard all over, one small way to help.
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POPSExcrement Antiobiotic Muskrats are semi-aquatic rodents prized for their musk - a strong-smelling substance produced by specialised glands - which can be used in perfumes, cosmetics and medicines. Now Ki Keun Kim and colleagues at Pusan National University, South Korea, have found that the animal produces another useful by-product.
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POPSSmaller U.S, Crops
It’s starting to look like planting delays and other weather maladies experienced in several major growing regions last spring may be starting to have an impact on crop yields. According to USDA’s Nov. 10 crop production report, production declined from last month’s prognostications for every major U.S. crop. Cotton production is forecast at 13.5 million bales, down 1 percent from last month and down 30 percent from last year. Yield is expected to average 837 pounds per harvested acre, down 12 pounds from last month and down 42 pounds from the record high yield in 2007. Upland cotton production is forecast at 13.1 million bales, down 1 percent from last month and 29 percent below 2007. Texas producers expect lower yields than last month, while producers in the Southeast are expecting increased yields. Upland growers in Alabama and New Mexico are expecting record high yields. Pima production is forecast at 459,000 bales, up 2 percent from last month but down 46 percent from last y
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POPSEPA teams with National Geographic and World Resources Institute to map ecosystem services
(Washington, DC – October 29, 2008) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is collaborating with the National Geographic Society and the World Resources Institute to develop tools that will help to fully account for the value of ecosystem services. Ecosystem services are the goods and services people obtain from natural systems. These benefits include clean air and water, erosion and flood control, soil enrichment, food, and fiber. EPA's Ecological Research Program in the Office of Research and Development will collaborate with the National Geographic Society to develop better ways to map ecosystem services and communicate these maps to the public. Researchers will create maps displaying those services to help decision makers in communities, states, regions, and tribes understand the total costs and benefits of proposed land uses. EPA will also team with the World Resources Institute to gain a better understanding of the ways in which decision makers in the private and
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POPSEven Lawyers are getting laid off
NEW YORK: You know things are bad when even lawyers are getting laid off. In downturns of years past, law firms exploited corporate failures and bitter, protracted lawsuits to keep busy and keep billing. But in this still-unfolding crisis, the embittered and the bankrupt have been relatively slow to appear, at least in court. American law firms in turn are feeling the strain. Thelen and Heller Ehrman, two firms whose deep San Francisco roots extend back decades, have collapsed outright, in part because of the business slowdown. Each firm left several hundred lawyers out in the cold. Many others, including Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal and Katten Muchin Rosenman, two Chicago firms ranked among the nation's 100 most profitable by American Lawyer magazine, and an international giant, Clifford Chance, have jettisoned dozens of associates. Still others, like Powell Goldstein, a firm based in Atlanta with more than 200 lawyers, are merging with larger rivals in deals that may be bid