Senate immigration bill to aid economy, budget office says

By Thomas Ferraro and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A White House-backed bill to overhaul the U.S. immigration system got a boost on Tuesday when the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that the measure would cut federal budget deficits and boost the U.S. economy.

The CBO analysis came as the Senate fended off amendments by the bill's opponents that would have delayed for an unspecified amount of time provisions to legalize up to 11 million undocumented immigrants and allow them to gain citizenship within 13 years.

But House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner raised new doubts about the bill's prospect in his chamber, where many Republicans oppose the "pathway to citizenship" for illegal immigrants that President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats have made a central feature of the sweeping measure.

The bill could pass the Democratic-led Senate by the end of this month.

According to the CBO, which assesses the cost and economic impact of legislation pending in Congress, the Senate bill would "boost economic output" and significantly reduce federal budget deficits over the next 20 years.

The White House embraced the CBO analysis, which was a rare bit of upbeat news after recent scandals over Internal Revenue Service handling of conservative groups' requests for tax-exempt status and disclosures of widespread government surveillance of telephone and Internet records.

"The Congressional Budget Office ... made clear that passage of the immigration bill would not only reduce the deficit, it would increase economic growth for years to come," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a statement.

One outspoken critic of the Senate immigration bill, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, attacked the CBO findings, however, saying they failed to take into account longer-term costs related to the 11 million becoming legal residents and eventually qualifying for "Medicaid, food stamps and cash welfare."

BOEHNER SURPRISE

Boehner made a surprise announcement on Tuesday when he told reporters he would only allow consideration of immigration bills backed by most of the 234 Republicans in the 435-member chamber.

"I don't see any way of bringing an immigration bill to the floor that doesn't have a majority support of Republicans," Boehner said after a closed-door meeting with his caucus.

Previously, Boehner had only said he would await Senate passage of a bill before deciding what course the House would take on an issue at the top of Obama's legislative agenda this year.

Many Democrats had hoped Boehner would advance a bill like the Senate's - one containing the pathway to citizenship - and that it could pass the House with the combined backing of most of the 201 House Democrats and some Republicans.

But the House Judiciary Committee worked on Tuesday not on pathways to citizenship for illegal immigrants but on a Republican proposal to clamp down on them.

It would do so by allowing state and local law enforcement officers to get involved in immigration enforcement, an activity now conducted by federal agents. It would also let states and localities enact and enforce their own immigration laws, as long as they were consistent with federal laws.

"We can't just be fixated on securing the (Southwestern) border," Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said. He added that the Republican-backed bill would strengthen federal enforcement of immigration laws while ensuring "that where the federal government fails to act, states can pick up the slack."

Representative John Conyers, the senior Democrat on the committee, called the bill "extreme and heinous." He likened it to an Arizona state law he said had resulted in "widespread racial profiling and unconstitutional arrests."

Some Democrats said they were hopeful Boehner would back off his new requirement that any immigration bill be supported by a majority of House Republicans, just as he did in the past year on such issues as tax hikes on the wealthy, the U.S. debt limit, disaster relief and renewal of a landmark bill to curb domestic violence against women.

"Boehner is trying to maximize his leverage so he can get a bill that is as conservative as possible," one Democratic aide said.

SPLIT ON BORDER SECURITY

In the Senate, a split over how to strengthen border security has slowed action on the measure sponsored by a bipartisan "Gang of Eight."

Many Senate Republicans do not believe the bill's provisions to tighten security along the border with Mexico go far enough.

Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota said he and some fellow Republicans were making progress on a compromise amendment that could be unveiled as early as Wednesday to deal with border security.

Boehner echoed complaints by many Republicans about the Senate bill, saying he believed the measure "is weak on border security."

Once the Senate passes its bipartisan bill, there may be pressure on Boehner to bring it or a similar measure up for a vote in his chamber, even if most House Republicans oppose it.

"The political winds will be much different after the Senate passes its bill," the Democratic aide said, especially if there is an overwhelming bipartisan tally.

The Republican Party urged its members to embrace comprehensive immigration reform after last year's election, which saw 71 percent of Hispanics, members of the fast-growing voting bloc, support Obama's re-election.

(Additional reporting by David Lawder and Rachelle Younglai; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senate-immigration-bill-aid-economy-budget-office-says-001349224.html

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Zeta Primes - Doors

The Reimann Hypothesis, which deals with the distribution of prime numbers, was first put forth by mathematician Bernhard Reimann in 1859. It has yet to be fully proven and remains one of the most important unproven theories in mathematics. It's so important that the Cray Mathematics Institute is even offering a $1 million purse to whoever solves it.

The Zeta Primes, an Austrian indie rock duo comprised of Charles Harm and Bene Unterberger, take a crack at unraveling this 154 year old numerical riddle in their awesome musical short, Doors, and discover more than than they could ever have imagined.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/zeta-primes-doors-513394988

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G-8 agrees plan to promote Syrian peace talks

ENNISKILLEN, Northern Ireland (AP) ? The leaders of major industrial nations including the U.S. and Russia say they are united in wanting a negotiated and peaceful end to the Syrian civil war that will produce a government "under a top leadership that inspires public confidence."

The declaration at the end of the two-day Group of Eight summit Tuesday seeks to narrow the ground between Russia and Western leaders on starting peace talks in Geneva that could end with the ouster of Bashar Assad from power.

Russia refused to back a declaration that made such a goal explicit.

Tuesday's G-8 declaration says participants in any peace talks must agree to expel al-Qaida-linked fighters from Syria. It also commits a further $1.5 billion in aid for Syrian refugees. It condemns human rights abuses committed by government forces and rebels alike.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/g-8-agrees-plan-promote-syrian-peace-talks-144915427.html

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La. plant explosions: With Southern industrial boom come dangers

Back-to-back explosions at chemical plants only miles apart along the Mississippi River have given pause to those who live in the shadows of America?s dirtiest industries.

On Thursday, an explosion at a chemical plant in Geismar, La., owned by Williams Cos. Inc. led to two deaths and injuries ? some serious ? to dozens of others. Then late Friday, another explosion at a chemical plant just a few miles away in Donaldsonville claimed one life and injured eight people after a nitrogen tank exploded during an offload.

"The incident involved the rupture of an inert nitrogen vessel during the off-loading of nitrogen," a news release from the company, CF Industries, said. "There was no fire or chemical release nor is there any threat or hazard posed to the community."

RECOMMENDED: Think you know the US? Take our geography quiz.

Hundreds of industrial plants, many that either produce or consume poisonous and explosive chemicals, line rivers and bayous throughout the South, but in few places as heavily as around New Orleans and the Mississippi River.

Some 311 chemical manufacturers employing 15,727 people currently exist in the parishes that line the Mississippi from Baton Rouge to its mouth. That number excludes the large numbers of oil refineries and plastics manufacturers in the area.

To be sure, locals welcome jobs that pay an average of more than $40,000 a year. But explosions like the ones that roiled the river this week remind many of the dangers, both to human life and the environment, such jobs bring.

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The explosions this week are ?an example of what it's like to live along a massive petrochemical corridor," Marylee Orr, executive director of the Baton Rouge-based Louisiana Environmental Action Network, told the Associated Press. "It poses a risk to the workers first and then to the community that lives right along the front line."

The explosions also highlight a toxic paradox of one of America?s few examples of economic boom as low natural gas prices and welcoming state regulations spur development in areas already dominated by industrial activity.

The Mississippi River?s span between New Orleans and Baton Rouge ? where the twin explosions occurred Thursday and Friday ? is one example. The other is the petro-corridors hugging the Gulf Coast south of Houston.

Louisiana alone has welcomed more than $30 billion in industrial investment in the last two years. The state?s unemployment rate is 6.5 percent, a full percentage point lower than the 7.5 percent national average.

Some critics say Southerners and Republican leadership in many of the affected states have only themselves to blame for welcoming what some call ?dirty industries.? But it?s also true that the US economy would likely struggle without such industries, and that the sacrifices by Southern states to take on such potentially dangerous plants benefits the US as a whole, including other regions.

Moreover, chemical plants are actually safer than the average industry, reporting a fatality rate of 1.9 workers per 100,000 compared to the national average of about 3 fatalities per 100,000 workers. The industry had 25 fatalities across the country in 2011.

Yet as incidents ranging from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 to the explosion at a fertilizer plant in the small town of West, Texas earlier this year, make clear, such accidents have the potential to wreak broader havoc, beyond loss of life. Many Americans are taking notice, especially since some studies have shown that one in three Americans are vulnerable to exposure to a chemical explosion or major release of toxins.

?When polled, over 70 percent of the population thinks we need better regulation of toxic chemicals,? John Deans and Richard Moore wrote last year in The Nation magazine. ?National security experts have said for at least a decade that these ?pre-positioned weapons of mass destruction? are a weak link in our critical infrastructure. Workers in dangerous facilities want a safer place to work. Communities on train and truck routes to and from these facilities want to be safe, as do communities near the plants themselves.?

In large part because of the economic benefits, as well as the relatively safe working conditions, many Louisianans take a live-and-let-live attitude toward the looming petro-plants that form imposing rural skylines.

"For the most part, day to day, month to month, year to year, you don't really think about? the dangers, Ascension Parish Councilman Travis Turner told the Associated Press. "Everybody knows somebody ? a brother or cousin or uncle ? who works at a plant. When something happened, everybody is worried about the worst case scenario, like? the recent explosions.

The US Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating both explosions. So far, there?s no evidence of foul play or terrorism in either blast, police authorities say.

RECOMMENDED: Think you know the US? Take our geography quiz.

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/la-plant-explosions-southern-industrial-boom-come-dangers-173654925.html

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Nanoparticles helping to recover more oil

June 14, 2013 ? When petroleum companies abandon an oil well, more than half the reservoir's oil is usually left behind as too difficult to recover. Now, however, much of the residual oil can be recovered with the help of nanoparticles and a simple law of physics.

Oil to be recovered is confined in tiny pores within rock, often sandstone. Often the natural pressure in a reservoir is so high that the oil flows upwards when drilling reaches the rocks containing the oil.

Less oil without water

In order to maintain the pressure within a reservoir, oil companies have learned to displace the produced oil by injecting water. This water forces out the oil located in areas near the injection point. The actual injection point may be hundreds or even thousands of metres away from the production well.

Eventually, however, water injection loses its effect. Once the oil from all the easily reached pores has been recovered, water begins emerging from the production well instead of oil, at which point the petroleum engineers have had little choice but to shut down the well.

The petroleum industry and research community have been working for decades on various solutions to increase recovery rates. One group of researchers at the Centre for Integrated Petroleum Research (CIPR) in Bergen, collaborating with researchers in China, has developed a new method for recovering more oil from wells -- and not just more, far more.

The Chinese scientists had already succeeded in recovering a sensational 15 per cent of the residual oil in their test reservoir when they formed a collaboration with the CIPR researchers to find out what had actually taken place down in the reservoir. Now the Norwegian partner in the collaboration has succeeded in recovering up to 50 per cent of the oil remaining in North Sea rock samples.

Nano-scale traffic jams

Water in an oil reservoir flows much like the water in a river, accelerating in narrow stretches and slowing where the path widens.

When water is pumped into a reservoir, the pressure difference forces the water away from the injection well and towards the production well through the tiny rock pores. These pores are all interconnected by very narrow tunnel-like passages, and the water accelerates as it squeezes its way through these.

The new method is based on infusing the injection water with particles that are considerably smaller than the tunnel diameters. When the particle-enhanced water reaches a tunnel opening, it will accelerate faster than the particles, leaving the particles behind to accumulate and plug the tunnel entrance, ultimately sealing the tunnel.

This forces the following water to take other paths through the rock's pores and passages -- and in some of these there is oil, which is forced out with the water flow. The result is more oil extracted from the production well and higher profits for the petroleum companies.

Elastic nanoparticles

The particles that are used are typically 100 nanometres in diameter, or 100 times smaller than the 10-micron-wide tunnels.

The Bergen and Beijing researchers have tested a variety of particle sizes and types to find those best suited for plugging the rock pores, which turned out to be elastic nanoparticles made of polymer threads that retract into coils. The particles are made from commercial polyacrylamide such as that used in water treatment plants. Nanoparticles in solid form such as silica were less effective.

China first with field studies

The idea for this method of oil recovery came from the two Chinese researchers Bo Peng and Ming yuan Li who completed their doctorates in Bergen 10 and 20 years ago, respectively. The University of Bergen and China University of Petroleum in Beijing have been cooperating for over a decade on petroleum research, and this laid the foundation for collaboration on understanding and refining the particle method.

Field studies in China not only yielded more oil, but also demonstrated that the nanoparticles indeed formed plugs that subsequently dissolved during the water injection process. Nanoparticles were found in the production well 500 metres away.

"The Chinese were the first to use these particles in field studies," says Arne Skauge, Director of CIPR. "The studies showed that they work, but there were still many unanswered questions about how and why. At CIPR we began to categorise the particles' size, variation in size, and structure."

At first it was not known if the particles could be used in seawater, since the Chinese had done their trials with river water and onshore oilfields. Trials in Bergen using rock samples from the North Sea showed that the nanoparticles also work in seawater and help to recover an average of 20?30 per cent, and up to 50 per cent, more residual oil.

Looking to field test

Now the Bergen researchers want to test out the method large-scale.

"We'd like to try it in the North Sea and are in contact with Statoil, but we are certainly not the only ones hoping for a chance. We are competing with many promising methods for raising recovery rates," explains Mr Skauge. "That is why we may well test the method onshore in other regions, such as the Middle East. Several actors from there have contacted us after reading our published papers."

Still questions unanswered

In the meantime the researchers will be learning as much as they can about particles and pores.

"We are working hard to understand why the particles work well in some rock types and more marginally in others," says Kristine Spildo, project manager at CIPR. "This is critical for determining which North Sea fields are best suited to the method."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/2yulnoD6xlg/130614082537.htm

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James Cameron gives record-breaking sub to science

Douglas Main

Director James Cameron addresses middle school students and other onlookers in Woods Hole, Mass., at a ceremony in which he donated his submarine, the Deepsea Challenger, to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on June 14, 2013. Cameron piloted the craft to the Challenger Deep, which is 35,787 feet (almost 11,000 meters) beneath the ocean.

By Douglas Main, LiveScience

WOODS HOLE, Mass. ? When James Cameron was about 12, he saw the Alvin submersible on the cover of National Geographic and was absolutely captivated by the vehicle's ability to transport ordinary humans to the seafloor. Alvin helped inspire Cameron to pursue a life of exploration and, several decades later, to build his own sub ? the Deepsea Challenger ? and pilot it by himself to the deepest part of the world's oceans.

Cameron visited the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Friday, a bastion of marine science here on Cape Cod that operates Alvin (still kicking nearly 50 years after being built). But it was no ordinary visit ? Cameron came to donate the Deepsea Challenger, which will now be housed where Alvin used to reside. "What's surreal about this situation ? is that it all comes full circle," Cameron said at a ceremony celebrating his gift of the sub to the institution.

Cameron and a team of collaborators in the United States and Australia designed the submarine over the course of seven years. It has many unique features that set it apart from any submersible in the world, such as its unique lighting systems and compact, powerful batteries, whose innovative design will be used in other crafts to further explore the ocean, said Susan Avery, WHOI's president.

"Put some gas in it and go and have some fun, but be back by midnight," Cameron joked as he officially handed off the sub.

Inspiring kids
A large group of curious scientists and residents gathered to hear Cameron, who addressed students from the town's Chatham Middle School. He encouraged them to pursue their passion, just as he did after being inspired in part by Alvin, one of the world's first deep-ocean submersibles. "Follow your curiosity and the things that interest you," he told the students. "The important thing to remember is that some of them may seem impossible," he said. "But you can set yourself down a path to get there and do the impossible."

Cameron fielded questions from the students, including one he'd never got before: Could the craft survive in space? He said it probably couldn't because it is designed to withstand crushing pressures, and not the lack of pressure. "I always love kids' questions," Cameron told LiveScience. "One thing they don't ask is why you did this. For a kid it seems natural to get in a submarine and explore the bottom of the ocean."

The stop here in Woods Hole is the end of a cross-country tour for Cameron with the submarine, during which he's brought it to different cities for students and kids to see. A large part of the inspiration for the trip was to get kids excited about science, Cameron said.

Rob Childs drove the truck that hauled the Deepsea Challenger across the country. He said Cameron's people called him out of the blue shortly before the tour. Childs never knew that the ocean's deep trenches take up an area the size of North America, a fact that Cameron likes to mention to show how little the ocean has been explored. "I've got a whole new outlook," Childs said. "Who'd have thought there was such a large area we haven't explored?" [Video: James Cameron's Dive to Earths' Deepest Spot]

The penultimate stop of the trek took place in Washington, D.C., where Cameron testified before a Senate subcommittee on the importance of funding for ocean exploration. While he received encouraging responses from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., his appeals didn't result in any concrete results, due to a lack of funds. "Funding for ocean exploration continues to decrease," he told LiveScience at the event today. "We've still got some educating to do."

Visitors to WHOI got to see the green submersible, and a replica of the relatively tiny compartment Cameron crammed into during his 12-hour voyage to the Challenger Deep, which is 35,787 feet (almost 11,000 meters) beneath the ocean surface in the Mariana Trench.

New species
Cameron's dive returned with a small sample of sediments from the ocean bottom. It would have been much more, but a malfunction dumped out most of the collected sediment as the sub surfaced. Nevertheless, the expedition has so far turned up 68 new species, mostly microbes, he said.

Cameron's dive also turned up microbial mats ? strange-looking, filament-like clumps of microorganisms ? on the seafloor. Researchers have speculated that a similar setup could have sparked the chemical steps that led to the development of life on Earth, Cameron said. The dive also revealed the presence of giant single-celled amoebas called xenophyophores ? bizarre creatures that are among the biggest cells known to humans ? near the Challenger Deep.??

It's the end of a long road for Cameron, but only the beginning for Woods Hole, which will use the sub for ocean exploration and to guide construction of new submersibles. Cameron will be focusing on making the "Avatar 2" and "Avatar 3" films in the next few years, but he plans to go back to the deep sea eventually.

"It's been an amazing journey," Cameron said.

Email Douglas Main or follow him on Twitter or Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook or Google+. Article originally on LiveScience.com .

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653377/s/2d4fb8b7/l/0Lscience0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A60C140C189630A510Ejames0Ecameron0Egives0Erecord0Ebreaking0Esub0Eto0Escience0Dlite/story01.htm

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